


Leftovers

by greygerbil



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 15:30:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3773440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick wakes up in the hospital and finds Will in the same building. Standing in the debris that Hannibal left in his wake, the two become tentative allies as they try to rebuild their lives.</p><p>(This fanfiction was begun before S3 had aired and starts almost right after the last S2 episode, so now that S3 exists, it is wildly AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

White, smudged.

Movement. Cold. Pressure. Sounds.

Eventually, a voice.

_When you wake up, your only choice will be to run._

He took a breath and another. Run, but something was lodged in his throat. Darkness enveloped him again. There were warm, wet, soft things in his hands. Things that shouldn’t be exposed to air. A woman’s voice curled into his ears like snails.

_He’s still alive._

Not if he did not run. Not for long. Hannibal Lecter had seen to that.

Frederick tried again to open his eyes. This time, the blotched white took shapes and soaked up colour. Metal grates at his feet. A lamp overhead.

He swallowed. The muscles constricted around an object. His lips, his teeth were obstructed. Pain pulsed behind his forehead. Ice sat in his bones. He lifted one shaking hand. He needed to know if he was still spilling out organs before he could flee.

A prick of pain surged up his arm. His hand was tied down.

Behind him, beeping started, fast and faster, like the pace of his heart.

_Gideon in pieces in my basement._

Just when the noise became insistent, following an imaginary, even flatline, and Frederick began to tear despite the pain at whatever resistance held his hand, hurried footsteps approached and a shape loomed over him.

_Hannibal._

“Please calm down, Dr. Chilton. Everything’s just fine.”

-

The nurse had held his wrists to the bed he had wrenched his consciousness from the void. He had seen white clothes, unknown face, name tag: _Terry Western, Saint Catherine Hospital._

“I didn’t think you’d wake up so fast,” Terry informed him while fixing the cannula that Frederick had attempted to pull from his hand. With a placid smile, he leaned up to do something out of Frederick’s field of vision that stopped the consistent beeping. Frederick’s free hand released the side of the bed, fingers stiff from clenching around it.

The breathing tube made him want to gag, but his frayed nerves were more concerned that sitting in his vocal cords, the tube muted him.

_I suppose it is not like anyone listened when I could talk._

But he had questions now, not the least of all being why he was in a hospital and why his head hurt every time he turned it and whether these two things were connected. With his mind fighting through the fog, he realised that not having _actual_ restraints on his hands was the surprising part. After all, he was considered the Chesapeake Ripper. Maybe they thought he was too weak to fight (they were right). However, if Frederick had wanted to put the fear of God into a dangerous killer, like he was sure Jack Crawford was _very_ eager to do, Terry, grey-haired, pot-bellied and moving with the nimble grace of a wounded elephant, would not have been the attendant he would have sent to the offender.

With shaking fingers, Frederick touched the tube running from his mouth.

“Oh, no, don’t pull that.” Gently, Terry slapped his hand away. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but we wouldn’t want to take your breath away, now, would we?”

He followed this with a self-satisfied laugh. Frederick was sure that Terry told this joke to every single damn patient that had something jammed down their throat around here. Unfortunately, it made him think with the suddenness of a well-placed blow of a big bag of discoloured plastic, pumping air into lungs that rose and fell under his thumbs, right there, damp under his finger pads, and breathing became all he could think of to keep himself from trying to scream.

“I’m going to get Dr. Martinez. She’ll want to know you’re up.”

-

Thankfully, the doctor’s first order of business was to remove the breathing tube. The plastic slid up his throat like a snake, leaving it burning. While he coughed hard enough to spit up a lung alongside the tube, Terry changed the angle of hospital bed with a creak and a jolt, so Frederick was sitting up, feeling like his head was full of helium.

“To speak frankly, Dr. Chilton, we didn’t think you would make it. It’s remarkable – and it only took you three days to fully wake up.”

Dr. Martinez smiled, flipping through his patient files and pushing strands of grey hair behind her ear where they joined the arm of her blue-rimmed glasses.

“What happened?” He croaked.

He remembered the interrogation room, then a crash. Nothing.

“You were shot in the head from a very short distance and in falling hit your head on the edge of the table, adding to the trauma,” Dr. Martinez said. “The bullet entered through your temple and exited through the back of your neck. It quite literally missed your brain by an inch and your spinal cord by a millimetre. You must have a guardian angel.”

“He’s sloppy,” Frederick managed, after marvelling at the details of his latest near-death experience. Tape and gauze on the left side of his face made the smile he forced lopsided. He felt like divine protection should, if at all possible, deflect life-threatening wounds altogether, not just slightly adjust the reaper’s scythe rushing by close enough to shave off his hair.

“The bullet caused a blood clot that was pressing on your brain. We considered it safer to put you in an induced coma until your situation had stabilised,” Dr. Martinez elaborated. “You were in the coma for about five weeks.”

“Who... shot?”

It had to have been someone watching the interrogation. Someone FBI – unless they had let Hannibal in. But why should he blow his cover to murder him when he had put all the pieces so perfectly in place?

Readjusting her glasses, Dr. Martinez turned to the nurse.

“Terry, would you please inform the physiotherapist about Dr. Chilton’s recovery? He’ll have to meet him as soon as possible.”

Whether Terry simply took the hint or just swallowed the request, he left the room as Dr. Martinez folded her hands over the file. The noise of the door shutting had her straighten slightly.

“I assure you that all... doubts that the FBI had about you in the beginning are cleared up. As to the details of the incident, I’ve been asked not to discuss them with you. The FBI will do that.”

The words after ‘cleared’ just barely registered. His head spun with a flood of adrenaline. If he had believed in any higher power, Frederick would have prayed. As it was, he wondered if it was Will Graham whose feet he should kiss. To believe Dr. Bloom or Jack Crawford had rediscovered their brains on their own was too optimistic.

“However, I would like to delay that meeting for a while. You will need a lot of rest to recover. Given your patient history, you really need to take it slow. In fact, it would not be difficult to make a case that you should still be recovering from the _last_ injury you received.”

Deep lines crossed her forehead as she regarded him.

“I want to talk to them.”

It would have helped if his voice had not faltered, making the last word almost inaudible. Predictably, Dr. Martinez shook her head.

“Give yourself some time, Dr. Chilton.”

Her tone was professionally kind, but all Frederick could think of was that he would not know for days, maybe weeks, whether Hannibal Lecter was still out there. He could see green line spike faintly on the heart monitor.

-

The physiotherapist was a young man with an orange tan and body fat in the negative percentages. He stayed for two hours, helping Frederick to sit up.

“You were always moving in the days you spent waking up. That’s good. It did some of the ground work,” he said.

Frederick concentrated on the rubber balls in his hands and forbade himself to think of the shades that had had him struggling pathetically in his hospital bed.

When it was time for dinner, his arms were too tired to move. Nurse Rhonda, Terry’s evening replacement, who continuously hummed songs under her breath at exactly the pitch Frederick associated with an alarm clock going off at four am, fed him.

“We figured you’d have trouble chewing,” she said, laughing, pushing a spoon between his lips. “So we asked the paediatrics unit for some baby food!”

“Hilarious,” Frederick murmured past a mouthful of carrot mush.

Over exchangeable days, the small indignities of life in the intensive care unit piled up in a familiar manner: bedpans, washcloth baths, plastic hospital gowns, staggering steps in physiotherapy. It was unwanted, but hardly new, and neither were the nightmares, though they came in a greater variety of private horrors. He was still trapped, strapped down, tied up, but now he would also run through mazes, woods, and every place he had ever called home in his life, chased by shadows. Stone-heavy limbs and weak knees and an oppressive presence like choking smoke all hampered his attempts to escape. He had met the Wound Man more often than he cared to count; he had been him a few times, too. Once he had stumbled as he had rushed down a long corridor and had seen he was getting his feet caught in his own intestines.

When Frederick woke up panting for air, he consoled himself by taking the images apart into elements and sorting them, as far as possible, to the traumas of the last year. They were reasonable reactions of a troubled psyche and nothing to be afraid of once they had passed, he told himself. But reason did not take care of every dark figure waiting for him in the corner of his eyes.

Frederick slept fitfully, but a lot, and trained more than the physiotherapist wanted him to. He tried to ignore the new addition to his growing catalogue of health issues, migraine-like headaches that the doctors informed him would probably keep happening for the rest of his life.

One early morning, Frederick gathered his first victory as he struggled up and dragged himself into the tiny adjacent bathroom with its bile-green tiles. On the way back from the toilet, however, he was distracted by his own mirror image under white fluorescent light.

Considering the positives, Frederick noted that did not need to lose those fifteen pounds anymore. Alongside them, his body had gotten rid of most muscle. He’d never been a tall man, but he looked his unimpressive size now, a caricature, a stick figure.

With morbid curiosity, Frederick fingered the gauze patch on his cheek and tore. For a moment, he thought he would not have the coordination and strength to contend with it, but, closing the fingers of the other hand tightly around the rim off the steel sink and breathing in deep, he pulled it back.

The scar was long and ugly, starting thick, where the bullet must have entered, and drawing downwards in what looked like a messy incision scar. To compare, Frederick lifted the hospital gown. Gideon’s cut was impeccable handiwork, a straight line down, but the doctors had had to cut across it to fit the missing pieces back in, so the final result was like a main street with alleyways in all directions. He wondered, desperate, if there was something he could do to hide the new scar he did those on his stomach.

Dropping the fabric, he looked back up, studying the rest of his face. It was the colour of ashes and his eyes seemed too big, the rings under them unnaturally dark. He could have laid down in the morgue like this and no one would have thought he was out of place. Lightheaded from standing too long, he could not feel his own pulse at all when he tried to.

Frederick sank down on the rim of the bathtub, counted the seconds between exhaling and inhaling and tried to chase the black moths at the edges of his vision away. It only just fully sank in that it had been so close _again_. He had almost, almost died, he had been a brief tilt of his head away from the grave.

But he was not dead yet. No, he would not make it that easy for Hannibal.

-

The nurses and doctors still did not allow him shoes or socks since he was not supposed to walk without assistance, but all that resulted in was Frederick wandering the corridors barefoot and at night. Authority had never impressed him much, least of all when it came clad in a white coat. Having wasted enough time in medical school before he had had to change subjects, he had met prospective doctors of all sorts. Few of them were the healers that held the wisdom of the world that patients hoped for. Gideon was also far from the only doctor who had ended up in the cells in his own hospital. Needless to say, that did not heighten his confidence.

Since Frederick was a psychiatrist he had also prescribed himself anything that would keep him from staring at the walls for too long. Especially at night, he much preferred walking the dimly lit hallways to his own room, where well-meaning nurses shut off the light because he was too proud to ask them not to and make himself look like he was afraid of the bogeyman.

Frederick had occasionally visited the Saint Catherine Hospital before, since they had a small unit for patients that needed special restraints, some of which had followed Frederick back to the Baltimore State Hospital secured in a van. That was probably also where he had been kept until the suspicions had been cleared. He was rather thankful he had not been awake for it.

The building of the Saint Catherine Hospital he was in was rather small, the different stations divided by glass sliding doors only and laid out over four floors. There was a garden in the back, but he would have had to get past a reception desk to get there. It was prudent not to wander anywhere without access to walls to hold onto and lean against, anyhow, since he hadn’t been granted a cane yet, either.

Frederick had gotten rather proficient at avoiding the staff. Most congregated in the nurse’s stations, so he circled around them as far as possible on his treks. Given his average speed, he hardly ever managed more than a few rounds and a couple flights of stairs before he had to fold and slink back to his own room, but that could take him quite some time.

The speed of his recovery was nothing short of frustrating, since it gave his ridiculously overcautious doctors a reason to delay the visit from the FBI. Not knowing who had shot him, whether Jack really thought him completely innocent and with no information on how likely it was that Hannibal would climb through his window in the night to finish the obviously botched job that framing Frederick had been was not helping his sanity. The recovery of his mind was dependant on the recovery of his body, but that could not be easily feigned or forced, no matter how hard he pushed.

One night, Frederick sat on the windowsill in the shadows of a small, unlit alcove for visitors, which was outfitted with a few metal chairs and a table decorated with outdated magazines and broken crayons. He was looking out into the lamp-lit garden and, through the small crack, enjoyed the warm summer breeze and drowsily marvelled at the fact that not all the world smelled of antiseptic.

The double noise of footsteps and hushed conversation did not make him stir. Hidden behind a tall potted plant, he was hardly visible to someone just walking by. For want of something else to do, he turned his head a little to catch the fleeting words.

“... always the one who has to bother with Friedheim.”

A plaintive male voice.

“Well, you were sick and I’ve had rooms 43 to 47 all week, so you’ll have Friedheim and... I’m not sure who’s in room 36 now, but, you know, whoever.”

Female and mentally past this conversation already, judging by the tone.

“I’m gonna need your help to lift him later.”

“Sure. Or ask Catherine, she’s got the room right next door.”

“Is Graham still there?”

Frederick was suddenly wide awake. He held his breath to catch the answer.

“Yeah. He’s gonna go to the regular station once he can properly walk. That’s what they wrote down, anyway. I mean,” the voice lowered conspiratorially to near-incomprehensible levels, “you know how it is with Dr. Wheeler’s predictions.”

Frederick waited until the echo of the footsteps vanished completley before he awkwardly slid off the windowsill and crept along the wall. The male nurse would have room 36 and two or three more. Catherine was either up or down. Graham was not a terribly uncommon name, but it was too great a coincidence not to investigate. If anyone would know what happened to him and Hannibal, would that not be Will? It could very well be what put him in the hospital.

He should have moved this expedition to a night when his head and legs were not already heavy from forcing himself up and down the stairs for practice, but Frederick would not sleep before he didn’t know for sure whether Will was here. Working his way through the rooms with a three in front, Frederick threw a beam of sickly orange light from the hallway onto the faces of two older women, a massive man, a skeletal face of indeterminate age and gender that looked at him from giant, haunted eyes – he closed that door fast – and a back turned away, with long blond tresses spread out over the pillow.

When he opened the door to room 39, the blanket on the bed rustled with movement. A mop of unruly brown curls raised from the pillow and Will Graham squinted into the light. Frederick was so shocked to actually see someone from a life he had been cut off from for days on end, he simply stood clinging to the doorknob. Will, in turn, was staring back at him with his mouth slightly open, instinctive terror written into every line of his tired face.

Looking down at himself, Frederick wondered how horrifying a man in a little dotted hospital dress who was visibly straining to stand on his two naked feet could really be. However, it dawned on him that Will’s presence on the intensive care unit could mean that he had been here long enough to still think Frederick was in a coma or possibly dead.

“You are not going any more insane than you have always been, Will,” he said quietly, closing the door behind himself. The room was dark, but a variety of machines with lit monitors and a street light outside the window cast Will’s room in perpetual twilight. “I woke up.”

The fear on Will’s face didn’t filly dissipate, but Frederick moved towards him anyway and heavily sat down on the edge of the bed by Will’s feet, since there were no chairs in the room. He was dizzy and excited, heart beating loud in his chest.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re in my room in the middle of the night.”

“Could I be a topic of your dreams?”

Will’s lips twitched in a small smile. “No, Frederick. Bigger men than you take those spots.”

As usual, his voice was subdued but clear, making Frederick question whether Will had been asleep. Will was looking at the ceiling now. He never did seem to like eye contact.

“I fail to feel insulted to not fit into your particular gallery of demons.”

It occurred toFrederick he should be angry at Will, but he could not quite muster the energy right now. Will could probably make the argument that Frederick had pointed a gun at him, which was not the sign of a good guest, either.

“Why did you call Jack Crawford?” Honest curiosity motivated him more than anything. What would rage gain him here? A slap fight between two invalids? “I know you had no reason to help me, but you _did_ know I was innocent.”

Will glanced into a pool of darkness in a corner of the room like he saw something there. “I thought you would be safer at the FBI. I didn’t want Hannibal to win this round, too.”

Frederick wanted to contest this claim, but he could not think of a different reason. General antipathy, perhaps, but Will had been a little too busy for such pettiness.

“For someone who was sent to prison by them, you have a tendency to dramatically overestimate the competence of your friends.” Frederick closed his eyes, trying to will an oncoming headache away. “Why would I have been in danger fleeing? Hannibal told me to run. The longer I kept the FBI busy, the better for him.”

“Blaming you was not a strategy he could keep up forever,” Will murmured, now looking at the ceiling again.

“You mean someone might have noticed a man who needs a cane to walk would have some difficulty subduing three armed FBI agents, hoisting one up to the ceiling, and carrying a corpse plus medical equipment into his house?” Frederick said cooly.

“Something like that. And when Hannibal eventually would’ve fled, who do you think would’ve been the perfect surprise to be in pieces all over his house when the FBI came to raid it?” Will glanced at him briefly. “He wouldn’t have let you run farther than you needed to to throw the FBI off his scent, then he would’ve collected you.”

The thought felt like cold hands crawling up Frederick’s spine. A last bratty flourish to the investigators certainly sounded like Hannibal’s taste.

“But I was allegedly safe and sound at the FBI headquarters and I woke up with bullet wound regardless,” he reminded Will.

“He had a contingency plan I didn’t count on,” Will admitted. “Maybe he never expected you to make it far.”

Now Frederick _was_ a little insulted, if only because Will’s tone suggested he agreed.

“That was hardly my fault – as you should know best of all,” he said, irrationally defending his lack of skill at evading law enforcement in a scenario he had never asked or planned for. Good God. He reined himself back in.

“What happened to me?” He wished his voice was a little more stable. “And to you? To Hannibal? The doctors won’t let the FBI into my room.”

Silence stretched on.

“I’ll tell you,” Will said, “everything. But you have to do something for me.”

His gaze was inscrutable. They had played this game before, but now Frederick wondered if this was how he had looked at Matthew Brown when he sent him to kill Hannibal.

“Striking deals again, Will? You realise I am in no better situation than you. I should not even be out of my bed.”

“Yet here you are.” Will cocked his head. “I need you to find out how Alana, Jack and Abigail are. If I am here, they are probably in this hospital, too. I’m not a relative and I’m considered psychically... _fragile_ , so the doctors won’t tell me.”

Three more wounded. Frederick was getting a hazy idea that Hannibal must have made short work of his public image once and for all.

“Abigail... ?” He asked, absent-mindedly.

“Abigail Hobbs,” Will said, like Frederick had asked him for the colour of grass.

“The Hobbs girl was killed months ago,” Frederick answered slowly. He wondered if Will was having trouble keeping the timeline straight.

The man swallowed, glanced to the side, smiled entirely without humour.

“It turns out it’s not quite as easy as that.”

Of course it would not be. Frederick took time to consider the proposition, but he knew that he really did not have a choice.

“I will think of something,” he declared, grabbing onto the metal frame of the bed to hoist himself to his feet. 

He could feel Will’s gaze on the back of his neck as he made his way out of the room.


	2. Chapter 2

The morning after the unexpected meeting, Frederick was woken by a nurse ripping the curtains open with a smile that matched the bright sun (although it didn’t sting his eyes quite so badly).

“Good morning! I have two letters here for you,” she chirped, “from, er,” she glanced down at them, “Joshua and Amanda Chilton. Dr. Martinez thought you’d like to read them.”

What little of Frederick’s half-asleep content drowsiness had survived the onslaught of sunlight immediately dispersed. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Does that mean she will let me have visitors?” He asked. Perhaps the FBI would finally be allowed in here, preventing him from having to jump through Will’s hoops.

“Family, yes.”

Frederick leaned back into the pillow with a frown as the nurse put the letters on his nightstand next to the yoghurt she’d left as breakfast. The change of diet was something his dignity was appreciative of, but unfortunately the yoghurt he had recently been supplied with tasted a good deal worse than the baby food, so he left it where it was. Instead, he took the letters and messily ripped them open, using his a finger as a paper knife.

His older sister Amanda was a property lawyer and his younger brother Joshua a professor of economics at the University of Philadelphia. Both of their letters were printed out and signed like business propositions. Joshua and Amanda gave their sincerest apologies for not being able to make time to see him, but they wished him all the best on his recovery, etcetera. Squinting at the letters, Frederick tried to remember if those were the _exact_ same words he had gotten after Gideon had gutted him, or if indeed this was not the work of copy-and-paste and his siblings’ secretaries were just severely unoriginal.

His brother, or whoever Joshua had left the duty of writing to Frederick to, had added two photos to the envelope, perhaps in some attempt at making the message more personal. One was a prim-and-proper picture likely produced in some studio that would not have been out of place on a business website’s About Us section. It showed Joshua with his wife, an ex-model turned teacher, and his son, a little boy Frederick had not met in years. A note not written in Joshua’s hand proclaimed more get-well wishes. The other photo was slightly faded, displaying the three Chilton siblings. As Frederick recognised it, he all but recoiled. His own copy of it had long ago been conveniently lost in a move.

The twenty year old photo had been taken in the kitchen of their parents’ house. Orange evening light fell slanted through meticulously cleaned windows onto a sparkling white kitchen counter behind the three of them and broke in the diamond on Amanda’s engagement ring. Joshua, one long arm stretched out past Frederick’s back to touch Amanda’s shoulder, was sporting a deep tan. If Frederick remembered correctly, Joshua had just returned from a trip to – Italy? Spain? – that he had taken before the Master’s degree had started in fall. Amanda had been about to enter her first internship in a law firm across the country. Frederick, for his part, had at that point in time been contemplating how he should break it to his parents that he would have to quit medical school.

He stared at the old image for a moment longer. Even without the memories attached to it, this picture was a brilliant example of why Frederick had avoided being placed between his siblings in most family photos, even though their age range seemed to suggest the order. Amanda and Joshua had inherited their late mother’s sharp cheekbones, soulful dark eyes and full lips as well as the long, graceful limbs, both having a good three or four inches on Frederick. It was, to put it mildly, not a comparison he should encourage.

But that had been a theme. On top of their physical dispositions, fate had not settled his siblings with any way to upset the comfortable family dynamic, either. Frederick’s parents had been liberal, but it had been a matter of quick glances and abrupt pauses still when Frederick had to be skipped in the merry-go-round of conventional banter about grandchildren and ordinary marriage woes.

Frederick could probably have made up for the social faux pas of his homosexuality by presenting a respectable boyfriend with a tie and a trust fund. However, his usually short-lived and ill-conceived relationships had had a way of self-destructing before major family events. In the yearly Christmas pictures, this had left him standing next to siblings cuddling up to stable long-term partners while his mother had customarily handed him a tinsel-covered decoration item or the family cat for something to do with his hands.

Where Frederick’s private life failed to keep up, his job had only added to the growing estrangement. Joshua had always liked to suggest that Frederick’s chosen branch of criminal psychology was to blame for his bachelor status (‘Bit creepy, you know? That might put people off’). Amanda, who had always fancied herself the understanding type, had liked to comment on his excessive working hours by assuring him that not everyone needed to do exceptional things and life was beautiful anyway.

Frederick had not spent a holiday with Amanda and Joshua since their parents’ death.

He slapped the pictures face-down onto his nightstand and piled the letters on top. Since family visits would not be an issue and the FBI presumably did not count as close relations, he might as well concentrate on the task that Will had set him.

-

Asking for Jack, Abigail and Alana would get him as far as it had probably gotten Will, so he dismissed the option. Checking every single room in the hospital would take longer than his patience permitted him to wait for the answers he wanted from Will, and the three might not even be in this building. It was also more than likely he would be caught by a nurse working in one of the rooms or wake up a noisy patient. The quickest way was to access the hospital’s files, but things were not as easy as they used to be when Frederick had been a medical school intern. Back then, he could have simply stolen a key and snuck into the room with the file cabinets. Now, the newest information would be updated only in the computer system. Whatever was in print, if there was anything at all, would be outdated by a few days, if not weeks.

On his permitted walk out with his physiotherapist, Frederick faked a dizzy spell next to the nurse’s station. While he dutifully sat on the plastic chair for visitors, breathing steadily and tuning out the physiotherapist’s spirited motivational messages, he glanced through the large plexiglass window into the small room where he could see the computer screen. He knew the interface – it was the one they had used at the Baltimore State Hospital before Frederick implemented a new system.

The program was easy to handle, but he also knew there was no way to access it without a username and matching password. Making his way back to the room with the physiotherapist, he considered his options. Talking it out of one of the nurses would be too suspicious. He had spent the better part of his time here deliberately ignoring the most open-hearted (and more stupid) nurses like Terry in the vain hope that they would leave him alone with their baseless enthusiasm. They would not be up for a friendly chat anymore.

But he still did not need to be a professional hacker to get in, Frederick reminded himself. Getting into a system mainly populated by nurses and doctors was the equivalent of breaking into a house without locks. Had he not wasted sizeable amounts of time composing mails about locking computers when one stepped off the work stations, not writing passwords onto the desk pads and not continuously alternating between 12345 and 54321 when it came to changing passwords? When he had asked the IT guy to make sure the system would reject passwords that were just the username, the procedure had locked about ten percent of his staff temporarily out of their accounts. He could not imagine it was much different here.

He still needed access to a computer connected to the internal system, though. During the day, there was no chance of sneaking into the nurse’s station. Aside from daytime staff in higher numbers, wheeling patients to and from scheduled operations, there were visitors and patients allowed to stroll around. Perhaps Frederick could have disguised himself with a shirt and suit pants and blended in as a doctor on another station, where the nurses did not know his face. But since there was no one he was close enough friends with to ask of them to enter a house in which a triple murder had happened just to get his clothes, Frederick had nothing to choose from his wardrobe but the mandated hospital gowns.

After nightfall, Frederick could, if he opened the door just a little, see down the hallway to the nurse’s station’s window, something he had made good use of already when starting his nightly journeys. Tonight was apparently and unfortunately quiet. There always seemed to be at least three or four nurses drinking coffee or chattering away. Frederick sat on the cold ground next to the door, back leaning against the wall, and felt more ridiculous with each passing hour.

At three am he had considered giving up for the night when a commotion of voices at the end of the hallway drew the attention of all but one of the numerous nurses in the station. Perhaps a pile-up on the highway had flooded the hospital with new entrants or someone needed to be reanimated. Now there was just one head left, a dark shadow against the bright station’s light, half-obscured by the pages of some magazine.

Frederick got to his naked feet and silently slid out of the room. It could nodt be that hard to lure one more nurse away, but he had to do it fast. Moving down the corridor in the opposite direction from the station, he glanced into rooms with open doors. The fourth door from his own had what he needed.

The man was strapped to the bed and sleeping soundly, surrounded by a jumble of machinery. Quickly, Frederick undid the leather straps around his ankles and middle. His hands halted over the last restraints around his wrists, though, as flashbacks of his own medical station turned into a chamber of horrors came to him, leaving the hair on his arms standing like he had been caught in a chill gust of wind. He would rather not lay awake more nights considering his implication in _another_ nurse’s premature death, so he left those restraints in place. The patient was snoring away, so he had probably calmed down or had been sedated, anyway. Should he still feel like getting difficult once he woke up, he would be able to trash around plenty with his legs free, hopefully arresting the undivided attention of the nurse while he did so.

Frederick assessed the equipment around him. Whatever was on wheels, he pulled into the direction of the patient’s legs, so it would look like he could have conceivably kicked it over. He tipped one monitoring machine, gently laying it sideways – and almost dropping it onto his own feet in the process, though it could not weigh more than ten pounds. When he was done displacing everything he knew not to be vital or likely to shrilly protest at being disturbed, Frederick slid the clasp that controlled the man’s heartbeat off his finger.

While the machines gave an alarm that would be echoed in the nurse’s station, Frederick hastened out of the room and ducked behind a corner in the hallway. His arms were trembling from the strain of lifting machines and a familiar pain stabbed from the core of his torso down his right leg, but he barely granted it any notice. He had a goal and no time to spare.

As soon as the nurse had vanished into the room, he rushed forward again, as quietly as he could, and closed the open door of the nurse’s station behind himself. The hallway was empty for now; the nurse would probably need some five minutes to clean up the chaos he had created. Frederick fell down on the chair in front of the computer and bit down on a curse as he saw the login screen. It would have been too easy if someone had just left it...

He started digging through the papers and magazines spread over the desk. No, something that obvious would have garnered slaps on the knuckles from IT if they ever dropped by. Frederick turned around the keyboard, the mouse pad, ripped open the drawers. There, half-buried under a stack of cheap ballpoint pens, was a yellow post-it.

_RiEhlert_   
_Mickey Mouse_

Adorable. Frederick’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The computer’s fan sprang to life. _Welcome_ , it flashed at him, before the program opened.

Frederick wasted only a moment to feel self-congratulatory before he typed the first name: Jack Crawford. Immediately, letters and numbers filled the empty standard form. Frederick skipped over the non-essentials like blood group and allergies. Jack’s status was alive and discharged. Frederick memorised the report as best he could: sharp force injury to trapezius and lecator scapulae, right side. No rigidity of the neck, full range of motion. Frederick wondered briefly if he would have felt anything if Jack had not made it.

Alana Bloom was next. She, too, was alive and out of critical condition, but still in the hospital, just a floor above him. The report noted spinal fracture from trauma that would need the patient to be immobilised in a corset for six weeks, and a concussion that was considered healed. Another stroke of luck, or carelessness on Hannibal’s part, he assumed.

His eyes fell first on Abigail Hobb’s status: deceased. Considering the girl’s bizarre history, Frederick made sure to re-check whether the data actually showed the same date of entrance as the other two patients, but there was no error here. Her throat had been cut, the trachea opened, and she suffocated on her own blood before emergency services could get to her. Frederick could still hear that tentatively hopeful note in Will’s voice in his mind, but the matter of Abigail Hobbs had, it seemed, just become very simple again.

He should have taken his leave, but since no one was outside yet, Frederick typed in Will’s name, too. Will had promised to tell him everything he wanted to know, but what was that saying? Trust, but verify. According to the data, Will had suffered from a sharp force injury as well ( _all those kitchen knives put to familiar use, Hannibal, cutting up people_ , Frederick thought, faintly nauseous) that ran from one side of his abdomen to the other. Hannibal evidently had not put as much care into it as Gideon. Only the small intestine and colon had been damaged and subsequently repaired in an emergency surgery.

Frederick logged off and forced himself out of the chair. Time to cash in his bargaining chips with Hannibal’s unfortunate favourite patient.

-

As he opened the door to Will’s room, the man was sitting in his bed with a small lamp burning next to him and a newspaper on his lap. His expression was lost in layers of stark shadows.

Frederick closed the door and sat down at the foot of his bed as before, taking a closer look at Will. If it was possible, Will looked more worn than last night, damp curls clinging to his pale forehead. The letters of Will’s newspaper were smudged where wet fingers had dragged along the columns, leaving today’s news of stock exchange troubles and political squabbles in a grey ink haze. It was not warmer here than in the rest of the hospital, so Frederick suspected one of the nightmares that had left Will drenched in his prison overalls often enough.

“I didn’t expect you back that fast,” Will said. “Have you found anything yet?”

“No, I thought I would come by for a tea and cookies,” Frederick said.

Will’s smile was toothy. “I knew you wouldn’t let privacy laws stop you.”

“Careful, Will,” Frederick gave back. “It is a bad sign to feel morally superior to those who do your dirty work. You might want to keep that in mind, considering sending others is becoming the M.O. for your various misdeeds.”

For maybe the first time in the duration of their acquaintance, Frederick felt like he had managed to get a blade between the plates of Will’s armour. The other man’s jaw worked, wordlessly, allowing Frederick triumph that was quickly dashed.

“Should you really make snide remarks about someone’s guilt of murder by proxy, Frederick?” He asked.

Frederick fell into silence. Will played with the papers. He should have walked away from him, but in the end, they needed each other, no matter how many blows they exchanged.

“Jack was already discharged. It was only a flesh wound,” he said without preamble, keeping a careful eye on Will.

Relief had Will’s shoulders sagging for just a moment.

“What about Alana?”

“She is not in a critical state anymore, but in a corset because of damage done to her back. They think she will make a full recovery.”

This time Will had a small smile to spare. Frederick looked at the darkness that collected around his ankles for a moment that was just a little too long not to be significant.

“What... about Abigail?”

Will sounded like he was expecting the answer Frederick had for him.

“Abigail died before she arrived at the hospital.”

Will’s face was blank like an empty board. He eyes stared into an abyss.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually, voice tight, “that sounds right.”

“How?”

“She was the only one who _had_ to die.” He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “He wouldn’t have let it happen – that I could reject him and still have her!”

“Reject Hannibal’s – friendship?” Frederick asked, drawing on what Will had told him before. This was not really what he had come for, but he was fascinated against his will by the strange bond that had existed between the two men. “What did Hannibal want with you and Abigail?”

“Leave. Start anew.” The wistful town was drenched in irony, but perhaps there was just a hint of regret hiding in there. “We were her fathers, that’s how he put it after I shot Jacob Hobbs. He kept her hidden until that evening. She was his leverage – or a gift to me, if all had gone exactly like he’d wanted it.” He looked at the ceiling. “But I didn’t do what he wanted me to, so... this was the only fate left for her. She was not less a pawn to him than you were.” Inhaling slowly, he paused for a moment. “I _knew_. I knew that she had to be be dead. It was part of his design. I just thought maybe the teacup could set itself back together once more.”

Will’s traumatised view on events was already making it difficult to follow the story, but now Frederick stared at him in dull confusion.

“Teacup?” He repeated.

“It’s something Hannibal said – about throwing down a teacup and expecting it to reassemble itself,” Will muttered. For a brief moment, his gaze flicked down and met his. “In fact, _you_ are the only teacup, Frederick. You manage to set yourself back together against all odds every time,” Will added, with surprise and bitter amusement. “With a few... cracks to show where they glued you back together, I guess.”

“Very poetic,” Frederick snapped, to gain time. His hands were curling into fists. The image repulsed him. He was made of sterner stuff than china, or he had to tell himself that because sometimes it did feel like his body was barely holding the pieces together anymore. “Then all of this was Hannibal throwing the dishes off the table now that he was done with you and your friends?” He added, in an attempt to entertain Will’s odd metaphors.

“And leave him with a clean white cloth. I wonder how often he has had to do it before.” Sinking back into the pillow, Will gazed past Frederick’s head. “You had questions?” He asked, weary.

Frederick collected himself.

“I want to know who shot me.”

“Miriam Lass,” Will answered. “Jack told me you had the right idea. Hannibal buried memories in her – particularly the memory that you were the Ripper. She grabbed Jack’s gun and shot you.”

Had Hannibal planned that, too? No, it must have been a lucky star twinkling for the cannibal, geting her close enough to a gun the moment she unearthed the false memory.

Frederick nodded his head.

“Where is Hannibal now?”

A humourless smile. “Obviously our attempt to detain him didn’t go so well. I guess no one slipped you one of these?” Will lifted the newspaper. “They know who is now, but they’re still searching for the Ripper.”

It felt like a block of ice had just dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Gideon was just a ghost now, but this meant Hannibal could very well end up standing in his doorway, wearing a doctor’s coat and a smile.

“He probably fled,” Will said, like he was responding to his thoughts. Frederick wondered whether the empath had soaked in his fear. It was not a pleasant thought to be that transparent for anyone. He straightened his back and clamped down hard on the panic that wanted to poison his thoughts.

“Hannibal was done here,” Will elaborated. “His friend, his colleague, his girlfriend, his _daughter_... all taken care of. No, he must have left.”

He sounded sure, or he tried to, anyway. Frederick was certain they shared some nightmares concerning Hannibal’s return.

“What girlfriend?” He asked, not because he particularly cared, but because he needed something else to focus on.

“Alana.”

There was no answer readily available for that. And to think Frederick used to consider her an intelligent psychiatrist... Although now he had a good question his lawyer could ask the FBI, namely since when the partner of one suspect was allowed to interrogate the other.

“If you’re done, I have a favour to ask you,” Will broke through his thoughts.

“What would that be?”

“I need you to visit her for me. Alana. I need to know how she is from her.”

Frederick shrugged. “I am not your errand boy, Will.”

“I’ll owe you one, Frederick.”

It sounded sarcastic rather than pleading.

“What would that gain me?”

“An in with the FBI? A diagnosis for a difficult patient who could be turned into a nice journal article?” Will offered.

“I can analyse my own patients,” Frederick said testily.

“Not like me,” Will answered.

That was true. But then, who could?

“I will sleep on it,” Frederick said with feigned disinterest. However, before he got up, he paused and turned to the man sitting in the ball of artificial light. “You know you are not responsible for Abigail’s death.”

Will tilted his head. A few strands of unruly hair got loose from the general nest, falling over his eyes. “Why do you care if I think that?”

Because he hated the thought that Hannibal had gotten out of it with all the guilt he should be feeling but could not spread out on so many others, just like he had pushed the blame on Frederick. He hated that it all had worked out like a charm for him and Frederick had lost all chances to foil any of his plans. But that was irrational and Frederick did not feel like sharing it.

“Why, you are my patient, Will,” he joked, instead, raising a brow.

Will snorted. “You’ve got a tough task ahead of you, Doctor.”

“You say that like that like you used to be fun to work with.”

Will just smiled in that forlorn way he had, looking at the blanket.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since season 3 begins today, this fic is now officially an AU. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway!

Will had nothing of substance left to offer him. Frederick knew it, and he assumed that his former patient did, too. If he did Will’s bidding, Frederick would be working on the basis of vague future favours now, a notoriously slippery currency.

However, he had to admit he was intrigued solely by the fact that speaking to Will was the most interesting possible activity around here. As far as hospital entertainment went, he had discovered a small bookcase in the entrance hall’s visitor’s corner. It was exclusively filled with creased paperback editions featuring covers with masses of flowing hair as well as a disconcerting number of ruffle dresses and open shirts. Frederick was fighting his way through one of them for lack of something else to do and visiting Bloom and Will would have filled his day more productively.

It dawned on that him his fascination with Will had never truly wavered even after he had found out that he was not the Chesapeake Ripper. There was enough wrong with that man to keep any psychologist busy for months, especially someone like Frederick, who had always been drawn to the aberrant and dangerous in the human mind; and despite the fact that Will was not a serial killer, Frederick would not believe that he did not fill that second criteria, too. The man had manipulated a sociopath into killing Hannibal. Despite the fact that it had not worked out, this did make Will a murderer – a righteous murderer with a target that Frederick would not have been sad to see go, but a murderer nevertheless.

There was, Frederick considered after a slog through another sixty pages of regency wooing, no harm in doing something for Will that cost him nothing. After Will blocking him through all of their regular therapy sessions, it was gratifying to have the upper hand in their relationship for once.

-

Because Frederick did not want to seem like he was at Will’s beck and call, he waited another day before he made the trek upstairs. With Bloom’s room number memorised from the file, he dodged the couple of chatting nurses that strolled up the corridor and ducked into the room without being noticed, closing the door quietly behind himself.

Bloom’s room looked much like his own, with a single bed and little enough machinery to assure him she had not had a relapse since he had looked at her data. Behind the window facing the door there was only the black shadow of the back of another hospital building across the road, so there was not enough light to see if Bloom was asleep. Her figure was shrouded in darkness, melting with the outline of the bed. However, when he crept close enough, she stirred.

“Doctor?”

“Yes,” Chilton said. “But only in a visiting function.”

A flash of the white of her eyes reflecting a small monitor’s green light alerted him that if she had not been, she was fully awake now. One arm shot out to the nightstand. Plastic scratched against plywood as her fingers pushed the lamp over the smooth surface before she found the switch.

“Chilton?” She stared. “You’re alive?”

“Disappointed, Dr. Bloom?”

Frederick gave her a sour smile. The episode in the interrogation room had not been forgotten and he wondered if she worried whether he had brought a weapon. Where Will had seen that killing was not in his nature, Bloom was hardly as observant. He did not mean to intimidate her, but he realised that he had zero sympathy if he did.

“What do you want?” 

“Nothing for myself. Will sends me.”

“Where is he?”

Watching her eyes grow even wider, Frederick again doubted the hospital’s well-intentioned policy of closing off information from recovering patients. Since they were all treated here, their respective health fell under confidentiality clauses, but still, even a cowardly doctor should be able to bend the rules far enough for a nod or a shake of their head to a few pointed questions about the survival of acquaintances.

“Will is here as well and wounded, but fine, as far as the circumstances allow,” he said vaguely. “Good enough to ask how you are, but not good enough to come visit you himself.”

“I’m sure you can see...” Her thin fingers came to rest on top of the blanket. “I’ve been better. But they say I will walk again.” A crease appeared between her brows. “You’re a patient, too,” she noted, staring at his naked feet. “How did you meet him?”

Frederick cocked his head and shrugged. “A lucky coincidence and a disregard for doctor’s orders.”

“Do you know anything of Jack and Abigail... ?”

He kept his silence, wondering if there was anything he could hope to gain from Bloom. However, she was not like Will – too upstanding to participate in underhanded exchanges. He also considered walking out on her or lying that he had no information. It would be petty but effective revenge for her part in the manhunt on him and it was very tempting.

However, there was no real benefit to angering Bloom. Eventually she would find out from Will Frederick knew what she wanted to hear. She was friends with him and Jack and the chance that she would obstruct him at some point when they inevitably met again through the Baltimore State Hospital was not a stumbling block he needed to place in his own future.

“Jack has bested us all and is already out of the hospital. Abigail did not make it.”

Bloom sucked in one cheek, presumably to bite the inside and not burst into tears in front of Frederick. She nodded her head to show she had heard.

That was his cue to leave. Moving to the door, Frederick was stopped by Bloom’s cracking voice.

“What did he promise you so you would play messenger?” She called to him from the small island of light that her tiny lamp cast around her.

Frederick put a hand on the door handle.

“I assure you, Dr. Bloom, I am acting out of the goodness of my heart.”

-

“I told you she was fine.”

The first thing Frederick had done when he was back in Will’s room was to sit at the foot of his bed again. It had not occurred to him to take that liberty with Bloom, which was natural, since they neither knew or liked each other much. Was it precedence or familiarity that led him to do it with Will, who could hardly be called a friend, either?

“I had to hear it from her. She didn’t believe much of what I told her about Hannibal, but...” Will paused. “Thank you.”

Frederick simply nodded his head. He could have gotten up now and returned to his room, but he felt slightly drowsy and comfortable in the quiet that stretched between them. The streetlight outside cast the room in nuances of grey. Some winged insect, maybe a moth, crawled over the windowpane, a black hole against artificial white illumination, and he followed its path with his gaze.

“You know, I don’t know what happened to Alana.”

Frederick tore himself from his reverie.

“She must have fallen. The injuries point to that.”

“Yes, she fell from the window. I found her in this, this,” Will’s hand made an uncertain descriptive gesture, “sea of shards.”

He did not explain further why her destiny then puzzled him so much.

“Well, I do doubt she jumped,” Frederick said, eventually.

“It must have been Hannibal,” Will answered, a little too eager to agree.

_Who else? Hannibal worked on his own or Will would have mentioned it._

But he _was_ not alone, Frederick remembered – there was the girl to consider. Hannibal Lecter must have kept her in his house for... how long had it been since Will spit up her ear? For that matter, had she willingly participated in that stunt? Had he kept her like Miriam Lass, or had he treated her nicely so Will would not come back to find his designated ‘daughter’ a traumatised mess?

“You think Abigail could have done it.”

“Hannibal could have manipulated her and Abigail was already...”

Will broke off and stared at his hands. A flash of regret sprang into his expression as he swallowed whatever would have come next.

Abigail was already... Frederick tried to finish the sentence for himself. The daughter of the Minnesota Shrike might be predisposed to violence? Perhaps in some cases that was true, but Will looked like he had spilled a greater secret than something Frederick would know from university. What had she done before Hannibal got his hands on her? Now that he had begun to crack open the past, Frederick wanted to understand all the steps that had led to a bullet in his head.

“Tomorrow night, I could ask Dr. Bloom – if you tell me more about Abigail.”

This time, Will thought for very long, though he got the vastly better side of the deal. Even after her death Will was protective of the girl. Hannibal had gotten himself a great bait, Frederick realised. How close had Will been to saying _yes_ to his plans of family idyll?

Finally, it was a look at Frederick’s face that seemed to push Will over the edge, whatever he found there; probably the speculation that he had already said too much.

“Okay.”

-

“Why would I tell _you_?”

That was an expected question, but fortunately, Will had given Frederick just the ammunition he needed in an aside. Dr. Bloom apparently had held Hannibal’s back against her innocent friend who had been through so much, had supported a cannibalistic murderer over the mistreated ex-prisoner. Enough guilt for a much worse psychologist than himself to twist her arm with.

“For Will’s peace of mind,” Frederick said affably. “The way he talks about it, it is something I truly think he needs to know – after all the things Hannibal did to his head, does he not deserve a little certainty?”

Bloom had to be aware of the manipulation, but she dropped her defiant gaze regardless.

“I didn’t know you were his therapist again.”

There were some snide comments resting on his tongue, but Frederick simply let her stew. Eventually, Bloom turned to look out the window.

“Abigail pushed me,” she said slowly. “She told me she was sorry and...” She took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“I am sure Will appreciates your honesty.”

“I hope it helps him.”

Her voice had grown quiet and Frederick left her to her thoughts. This time, he was already out the door when she spoke up again.

“Dr. Chilton?”

“Yes?”

He glanced down the corridor to see whether her voice had caught anyone’s attention, but the hallway was deserted.

“Please tell Will that I need some time to think. And that I’m sorry, too.”

-

Frederick had begun to understand what Abigail meant to Will, and in retrospect he had wondered how stoic he had been when he had received the news of her death. He suspected his usual talent to carefully shut himself off from Frederic. It was a wall he had run in repeatedly while trying to analyse him in his hospital. It could simply be easier to accept a death he had already mourned once, too.

However, Will having considered Abigail’s involvement did not protect him from the blow Frederick relayed today.

With the bedside lamp burning, Frederick could see the miniscule tremble of Will’s lower lip and the glassy sheen over his eyes. Frederick did not wait too long before pushing for the bit of information he wanted. Will would have a harder time lying like this.

“She was in the habit of helping out father figures?” Frederick supplied.

“Her father would have killed her if she hadn’t helped him. I doubt Hannibal left her a choice, either,” Will snapped. “We both know what he can do to people. He made Miriam Lass shoot you.”

Frederick hesitated. Hannibal had made Miriam Lass _hate_ him. The access to a weapon was too much of a coincidence to be pre-planned. Even if Hannibal had expected him to be caught, how high were the chances that he and Lass would ever meet as they had? Lass was the one who had decided the best way of dealing with a man who had made her suffer like Hannibal had was to end his life. Had Abigail decided on her own what was necessary to protect whatever idea Hannibal had put in her head?

“That is a possibility,” Frederick answered.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You should choose to believe what is most helpful for you.” _Seeing as she is dead_ , Frederick added in silence.

With an ugly, aborted laugh, Will stared at the ceiling “I need to talk to more people who are not psychologists,” he muttered. “Might get a straight answer every once in a while. Does it matter now?”

Obviously it mattered to Will, so Frederick was not going to push the point that Abigail had willingly furthered and perhaps even participated in the death of several young women to keep herself safe before. He did not know what he would have done in her skin, at that age, and having been raised by an insane man. But many murderers had a terrible past and that made their later victims no less dead. Maybe she had simply applied to Alana what she had learned – to put her own survival above everyone else’s. It was a solid hypothesis, if he said so himself. But then, no part of Frederick’s mental well-being was wound up in having to believe Abigail was fundamentally a good person; the same did not seem to be true for Will.

Will rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and Frederick got up to grab a few tissues from the box on the windowsill and handed them to him. He knew a number of strategies to deal with distressed people, but they were designed for ordinary men and women, not whatever Will was. However, it would have been awkward sitting at the foot of his bed without acknowledging his grief. There was a rustle of the cheap, thin paper as Will blew his nose.

“Why do you care about Abigail?” He asked, crumpling the tissues in his fist.

“I was supposed to have killed her,” Frederick reminded him. “And I am fascinated by the breadth of devastation Hannibal left behind.” Although that sounded like there was pleasure in it, and for him, terror definitely dominated. “I feel like I stumbled out of a high-way pile-up,” he clarified, “and now I look back at the burning wrecks.”

“I told you he’s the devil,” Will said, voice rough like old wood straining.

“He is a man,” Frederick said. “Deifying him is a dangerous idea, Will.”

“ _He_ believes he is a god.”

“A delusion so common it borders on banal.” Frederick pursed his lips. “A dozen people under my care will tell you happily that they are Jesus. If simply believing it makes them right, the bible will need substantial rewrites.”

Smiling wanly, Will looked at him with his red-rimmed eyes.

“Hannibal is not like these other people you keep.”

“I am sure he would like you to believe that. No,” Frederick shook his head, “he just dresses better than them.”

Will looked as unconvinced as Frederick was, but Frederick needed to keep that line of thought. Never let yourself be pulled into a psychopath’s delusions. Because it was tempting – all these threads Hannibal had held in his hands, how easily he had evaded capture for so long. Frederick could not let him turn into some preternatural being that could haunt him.

The silence spread through the room again. Outside, footsteps hurried down the corridor.

“Did Alana say anything else?”

“Only that she needs time to think, and that she is very sorry. I think you will have to make an effort to use your own feet.” Frederick glanced at them where they bulged the white hospital linen next to him. “Fixing your relationship would be a bit difficult through an intermediary.”

“Aren’t you a psychiatrist?”

“My apologies, but I do not do couple’s therapy.”

Will huffed some semblance of a chuckle. “No, that’s not been a topic in a long while. Really, all the company I want right now is my dogs.”

He truly sounded quite wistful. Frederick remembered the dogs. If he had not been occupied with the fact that he had just been framed for multiple horrifying murders, Frederick might have had time to be afraid of some of the bigger ones swarming him the moment he had exited the car at Will’s hut. They had only licked some dried blood off his hands, though.

“Why do you have so many of them?”

“I pick up strays.”

“That is an explanation, not a reason,” Frederick pointed out.

“Why does anyone have dogs?” Will ran a hand through his hair, a mess of tangled, unkempt curls. “They are faithful companions. Don’t you like dogs, Frederick?”

“I am a cat person.”

“Why?”

Frederick smoothed the fabric of his hospital gown. “Cats are independent and loyal only if one continually earns it. I prefer that to pack rank submission.”

Will made a small noise. “Some research says cat lovers have corresponding personality traits... a proclivity for mistrust and abrasive behaviour.”

“Research also suggests that dog owners are social people who enjoy the company of others. Not the profile of someone who lives a thirty minute car ride from the next human settlement.”

“I _am_ social. I have seven dogs.”

Frederick could not help but mirror Will’s brief, sardonic smile. He grabbed on to the iron frame of the bed to push himself to his feet.

“Try to sleep,” he said after a beat of silence. Wishing a good night after the news he had brought would have seemed like a cruel joke and yet he had felt the need to say something. The situation seemed a little more muddy than a business deal.


	4. Chapter 4

Frederick woke up the next morning with a blinding pain in the solid area of meat, nerves and tendons in the back of his neck, stabbing forward in sharp bursts. A couple of hours later, a bored student doctor diagnosed an infection of some inner stretch of the bullet wound and Frederick found himself confined to the bed once more.

Since the pain bled into his brain and made him dizzy, there was no way to circumvent the order this time. It took hardly a day before he wished for the limited freedom he had had wandering around the hospital, though it had seemed like a prison at the time. Even his late nights talk with Will had been a welcome diversion. That he missed being what boiled down to essentially the role of someone’s telephone only further proved to him that he needed to get out of this hospital as fast as possible.

However, just when his health took a turn for the better after a week and a half, another stumbling block was placed in his way in the form of a tired-eyed thirty-something who shuffled into his room one rainy afternoon in his sweater and jeans, carrying a leather-bound notebook and a Styrofoam coffee cup.

“Hi. My name is Robert.” He offered him his hand. “Frederick, right?”

“Dr. Frederick Chilton,” Frederick said, shaking Robert’s limp fingers, to shoot down the ingratiation that came with immediate first-name-basis. The attempt went by unnoticed or ignored.

“My pleasure, Frederick. I’m the hospital counsellor,” Robert said.

With an inward groan and a frozen smile, Frederick sat up in his bed.

“I did not expect your visit.”

Nor had he asked for it.

“Well, Dr. Martinez wanted your health to be stable first. But I think that’s not the worst – a few weeks help to get some perspective. Time heals a lot of wounds.”

“I was told the scarring from the bullet wound is permanent,” Frederick said, raising his hand before the man could speak again. “Look, _Robert_ , we have both studied psychology, so-”

“Social work, actually,” the man said.

“Of course.”

He should have expected it, really. Frederick forbid himself to ask the man why he was not pestering fourteen-year-olds from a troubled inner city school with arts-and-crafts programs instead of wasting _his_ time.

“My point is, you must have seen that I am a psychologist in my documents. As such, I am well able to deal with any lasting trauma myself.”

“Sure, you got all the know-how,” Robert said. “Still, talking helps. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

Frederick took a deep breath, running through the list of standard questions he would ask in such a situation to spare them both the trouble. “I do not want to describe what happened, nor how it made me feel. I am not blocking the memory, either, I am just not particularly interested in reliving it.”

Robert tapped a pencil that looked more like a chew toy against his notebook. “If you don’t want to talk, relaxation techniques are another way to go. Meditation, yoga – they have classes just down the road, maybe in a few weeks...”

“I am sure there are people whose problems can be solved by doing nothing,” Frederick could not stop himself from interrupting. Hannibal was still strolling through the countryside, free as any of them. Frederick’s problems were a little too substantial to address them by sitting cross-legged in a room among managers with imagined burn-out syndrome and housewives bored to depression.

“Robert, all I want to do is get healthy and resume my work. I am sure you can appreciate that.”

For the first time, he had startled the counsellor out of his apathy.

“You want to go back to work at the asylum? The, uh...”

“The Baltimore State Hospital. Of course.”

Frederick had never once questioned that. Why would he throw away all he had achieved in his career because Hannibal had momentarily drawn him into his world as a pawn? He would not let that man tear down the efforts of half his lifetime.

“Well, I think – wouldn’t you be confronted with people like Dr. Lecter?”

“No one in my hospital is quite like Hannibal Lecter,” Frederick said. He realised after the words were out of his mouths that he had been parroting Will instead of sticking by his own opinion of Hannibal as just another psychopath. A few nights of being too weak to flee the bed even he if would have had to, staring at a half-opened door with nothing but moving shadows behind it did wonders for paranoia.

“They are criminals, though. Didn’t one of them attack you a while ago? The one who...”

The man shifted on his chair. The rhythm of his pencil-tapping became erratic.

“Yes. But I brought Abel Gideon back into my institution after the attack. I do not scare that easily.”

That was a blatant lie. Frederick had a very healthy sense of self-preservation, in theory. However, his fear had not always stopped him from a variety of decisions that ranged from reckless to foolish.

There was a knock at the door that interrupted whatever great wisdom the social worker surely had to impart on the topic of serial killers. Frederick expected a nurse to come to his momentary rescue from this conversation. Instead, the door opened to reveal Will.

He had been upgraded from his nightgown to a white shirt and grey sweatpants as well as slippers. His stubble was reduced to manageable levels and his hair had been washed, although it was no less tousled. Through square glasses, he looked between the two of them.

“Hello Robert,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, that’s alright,” Robert said, at the same moment as Frederick asked Will: “Please do come in.”

“I think we are done,” Robert added, deep trenches dug into his forehead. Still frowning, he said his goodbyes to the two men. While shaking his hand, he looked Frederick in the eye again. “Please reconsider about your job. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I like my job, Robert,” Frederick answered. “I do make a difference there, which is not something too many people can say about their occupation,” he added while he glanced briefly at Robert’s hospital-issued nametag before he released his hand.

Will closed the door after Robert.

“Not a good idea to tease him. He could tell them you’re not fit to be released, you know.”

“If anyone here considers his opinions grounds to keep me longer than I need to be here, I am going to write a report to our shared employer, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.” Frederick looked up at Will. “You have met him, I take it. Did he advise you to do yoga as well?”

Will smiled wryly.

“Yes. It’s good for the soul, I hear.”

“If that is all. I have been informed by quite a few patients that I am missing mine, along with the heart. Are you concerned about yours?”

“Oh,” Will laughed breathily, taking an apparent interest in in the ground, or possibly the tips of his slippers, “it’s a little late for that.”

Without explaining his pessimism, Will paced around Frederick’s bed and moved to the window, looking out at a view Frederick could have drawn from memory by now, every single leaf on the tree behind the glass.

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting,” Will said with forced blitheness. “I’ve been up and walking for four days. It surprised me I’ve never met you. It’s not a big place and you were quite the explorer, as I remember.”

“I had a minor infection. Not a big setback. How did you find me?”

“I asked. One of the nurses seemed to like me. If you talk to Theresa, she thinks we’re old friends.”

Turning to him, Will’s gaze took in the whole of his concentrated living space, the bed with the nightstand. Because no one had brought him personal effects, it was empty but for the lamp, a leftover packet of cookies from lunch a couple of days ago and the book Frederick had found in the visitor’s corner. Naturally, Will’s eyes were drawn to the garish watercolour cover of the embracing couple.

“ _Autumn Dreams_ ,” Will said, picking up the book with a look of feigned innocence. “Looks used. You’re a fan?”

Frederick raised a brow at him. “The visitor’s corner surprisingly did not have a section on advanced psychology. I have read the book twice, though. Hard to acquire new material like this. On a technical level, one can learn to appreciate the tricks of literature written like fast food is cooked.”

While he talked, Will thumbed absent-mindedly through the book. He looked just as tired as before, Frederick thought. As the well-worn pages bent under his fingers, Frederick’s bookmark slipped out and fluttered to the ground.

Will retrieved it, his face animated with surprise. Too late, Frederick remembered that he had stuck one of the photos his brother had sent him into the book.

“Your siblings?”

The way Will looked at the picture made Frederick feel exposed. He knew about the way he deconstructed and rebuilt evidence in his brain.

“No need to do a forensic analysis on it, Will. It is just an old picture my brother put in his letter.”

Will handed the photo back to him.

“He could have picked one where you look a little happier,” he said offhandedly.

Gazing at the photo, Frederick saw his own smiling face. It looked perfectly content, if one did not factor in the way he stood just ever so slightly to the left so his shoulder would not touch his brother’s chest and the distracted flicker in his eyes, barely betrayed by a small line between his eyebrows. He wondered what else Will had intuitively picked up on that even Frederick could not see, only feel when he thought back on the situation. Did Will always see that much in such a short time? No wonder he avoided humans. The complete inability to accept even something so unimportant like this photo as a meaningless stock memorabilia because he always accidentally glanced through the cracks at the hidden and usually ugly parts of human nature had to weigh on Will. Slightly unnerved, Frederick stuffed the photo back between two random pages.

“I just wanted to see whether you’re still in the hospital,” Will explained. “I’ll leave you to your reading.”

“How nice of you. I should thank you for delivering me from Robert.”

Will shrugged.

“I’m in your debt, after all.”

-

Despite his stated intentions, though, Will was back in his room the next day. Frederick sat on the edge of the bed, working on exercises his physiotherapist had given him, when Will opened the door after a curt knock.

“If I had not tossed my phone fleeing, we could exchange numbers to talk,” Frederick said with a sardonic smile.

“Pity.”

Will stepped forward and stretched out his hand. He was holding a slim, black book with a purple, anatomically correct heart and an emaciated drawing of a human on the cover.

“A doctor gave this to me some time ago so I’d have something to do. He said he didn’t need it anymore. They’ll probably release me in a few days, anyway, and I thought you could need a break from the romance.”

Frederick took it from him. “Conrad’s _Heart of Darkness_ ,” he read out loud. “Bad omens seem to follow you, Will.”

“You have no idea.”

Placing the book in his lap, Frederick searched for Will’s gaze, which was as elusive as ever, focusing on something invisible ten inches to the left of his head.

“Any reason for your sudden burst of sympathy?”

Will deliberated his answer for a moment. “In here, you’ve yet to give me a reason not to be civil.”

Sheer friendliness, then. How unlikely.

“Thank you, I suppose.”

Will nodded his head.

“You can give it back to me when you are out of the hospital.”

That day, Frederick worked his way through the novella. His reading tended to be related to his job rather than for enjoyment or the pleasure of words, but he was soaking up the intricate language that, though it described a place brutal, twisted and oppressive, at least took him from the savagery that had invaded his own life. After dinner, he picked up the book that laid open on his nightstand, almost finished, and found again the sentence on which he had stopped.

_“‘Yes, I know,’ I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her – from which I could not even defend myself.”_


	5. Chapter 5

Frederick was moved to a different hospital wing the next week, which broadened his options as far as outside communication went. He called his maid, a hardy fifty-something who was thankfully not deterred by the several gruesome murders that had been committed in his house, and could be persuaded to bring him some clothes, his wash bag, the subscription magazines on psychology that must have piled up in his mailbox by now, and his tablet.

One could make some observations on the nature of human identity through this experience, Frederick contemplated, once he had received the items. In dress pants and a new shirt, with access to his e-mail and supplied with a line to his field of work, he felt three times as much as himself as he had when thrown back on his own largely undisturbed company in the empty hospital room. This only strengthened a perhaps unusual view for his field that he held, which was that that too much introspection was not necessarily healthy. The human brain was made for interaction and exploration, and Frederick had always had a tendency towards self-doubt and latent paranoia when left completely to his own devices.

Thanks to the internet, the clucking of protective doctors was only a distant noise now and he could fully immerse himself in the progress of the search for Hannibal Lecter. However, while the initial outrage had been great, there was little follow-up. The FBI and police reportedly used the case to measure egos, a couple of local politicians picked up on it for the upcoming election and the yellow press abounded in fear-mongering. A plethora of hack authors fell over each other to find the most gruesome yet snappy description of the supposed horror Hannibal’s former guests must be experiencing after the revelation, with everyone who had ever tasted Hannibal’s cooking chiming in as eye (or, as it were, tongue) witnesses. Frederick wondered why the resident expert on exploitative crime journalism had not thrown her hat in the ring. A visit to tattlecrimes.com informed him of Freddie Lounds’ passing. To his surprise, his heart dropped a little as his eyes touched on the latest and last headline on the page, supplied by a different author over a short matter-of-fact report.

They had not had any heart-to-hearts after their unfortunate meeting in Gideon’s operation theatre. However, he had sent her flowers with a ‘thank you’ note that had taken him quite some time to word properly, given the eccentric circumstances that Hallmark just did not have a template for. True to form, Freddie had used his goodwill by demanding a series of interviews with his inmates. She had essentially looked to abuse gratitude resulting from a life-and-death situation, but Frederick had found more amusement in that than anything else. Had he ended up in her profession, he could not say he would not have done the same. He had not granted her every request, but more than he had used to, and her ambition and wit had always provided some moments of entertainment when she visited.

But Hannibal had taken that, too, and made a spectacle of removing her, considering the photos of her corpse on some of the less tasteful news sites.

A different news source finally emerged as well: A day after his transfer, the FBI was on his proverbial doormat in the form of a woman about his age who Frederick had never seen before, wearing a strict costume and an equally neatly prepared expression of friendly distance. Trailing behind her was Jack Crawford with deep furrows crossing his forehead. Though one of Frederick’s constant annoyances had been how long his doctors had kept him from the reach of the FBI, he realised now that greeting them while on his own two feet in actual clothing was an advantage.

“I’m Kate Prurnell,” the woman introduced herself. “I’m an investigator for the Office of the Inspector General. Since the Hannibal Lecter case has gotten severely out of hand, we are now trying to disentangle it internally to see where our processes could have been smoother.”

“I have a couple of suggestions,” Frederick said, smiling at Jack.

Ms. Prurnell took a deep breath.

“Obviously there have been a lot of problems in regards to you, Dr. Chilton...”

“He was a reasonable suspect,” Jack said, icily. “I don’t read minds yet.”

“You were searching for a cannibal. I cannot eat _meat_ ,” Frederick answered.

Jack snorted, folding his arms over his chest.

“A recent development. A cannibalistic killer would not necessarily stop because of doctor’s orders. Seems like the sort of thing a psychologist should be aware of.”

“Jack...” Ms. Prurnell’s eyebrows were travelling upwards with such speed it seemed like they were trying to crash into her hairline. “Would you mind stepping outside with me for a moment? Dr. Chilton, is that alright?”

Frederick felt the joy of an elementary school boy seeing his least favourite class mate about to be escorted out of the room by the headmaster.

“Of course. I am not going anywhere.”

When the two FBI agents had left, Frederick followed them to the threshold of the room. The door was closed, but the receding footsteps of the two did not sound for long, so, with his ear pressed to the thin wood, Frederick could still hear their voices.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“What am I – what are _you_ doing?” Ms. Prurnell hissed back, barely audible to Frederick.

“I’m talking to Chilton like you asked me to. What do you want from me?”

“Jack, I’m not sure you understand the situation. If Chilton sues the FBI, you only losing your job is a best-case scenario.”

“The last time I checked, it’s not illegal to have a wrong suspect. It happens all the time.”

“Of course it does, but...” A pause. Ms. Prurnell sounded regretful. “Jack, I don’t need some smarmy lawyer to tell me that by this point, Chilton could make a genuine argument that you’re trying to get him killed. When Abel Gideon fled, you put an escort on Alana Bloom, who’d had a few sessions with Gideon, but not on his therapist of two years. You also didn’t go looking for Chilton when he didn’t answer his phone while Gideon was running free.”

“It was an oversight,” Jack said, exasperated.

“Yes, and the next oversight was chaining him up in an interrogation room with the other suspect’s girlfriend while bringing in a gun alongside a mentally unstable woman meant to identify her torturer. Do you know what this looks like?”

“You can’t seriously believe I would play fast and loose with a man’s life! If that’s how you feel about me, you should’ve had me suspended years ago! ”

“It’s not, obviously,” Ms. Prurnell said sharply. “Still, someone who doesn’t know your previous work might not be so inclined to be on your side.”

Frederick silently agreed with her. Jack was not malicious, just dangerously incompetent.

“This isn’t kindergarten, Jack. I don’t care whether you like him. You should be thankful that he is still alive to negotiate with. If the bullet had killed him, Miriam Lass would be facing charges for manslaughter – and she’d get to live the rest of her life knowing that Lecter made her a killer.”

Jack did not answer, or if he did, it was too quiet for Frederick to hear. Frederick’s research into Hannibal’s story had led him to several articles about Miriam Lass’ rediscovery and the circumstances of her disappearance suggested the young FBI hopeful had been something of a protégé of Jack Crawford’s. Her fate now became the decisive blow to make Jack fall in line.

Stepping back from the door, Frederick went to his bed and picked up one of the magazines, leafing through an article about the disadvantages of quantitative psychology as the door opened once more.

“I hope we haven’t left you waiting for too long,” Ms. Prurnell said.

“Not at all.”

Frederick stood up from the edge of the bed and shut his magazine, a finger between two pages he had not read, still with a smile on his face that came from the deepest, most honest place of his heart. He was enjoying himself immensely.

Straightening a slim golden watch strap around her delicate wrist, Ms. Prurnell glanced at Jack over her shoulder.

“Given the sensitive nature of this open case as well as the damages you have taken, the FBI would like to talk about some form of compensation.”

“I do not need money,” Frederick said and let the phrase dangle there for a moment, pretending that the FBI had nothing to lure him with. “There is something I would like, however, which I do not think is unreasonable.”

“Well, if _you_ think so,” Jack said, but fell silent under Ms. Prurnell’s gaze.

“Please, Dr. Chilton,” she said. 

“I want to be informed on what steps are taken in Hannibal’s case. I will not pass the information on as long as the investigation is going on. Unless you want my expertise,” and that would be a cold day in hell for Jack Crawford, “I am not asking to be specially involved – but I want to be told.”

“You’re asking us the leave a giant security leak in our investigation,” Jack said.

“Make me an official advisor again so you know you can accuse me if I misbehave. No worries, Jack, I do not expect you to start listening to me _now_. Just for the paperwork.”

“What’s the point?”

“Not knowing what was happening behind the scenes has not worked out very well for me last time,” Frederick said. “I will not do anything to hinder you. I have some very personal interest in seeing this case closed.”

The smile Jack showed him was pure contempt. “Another one for the collection, Dr. Chilton?”

Frederick shrugged his shoulders. “An outstanding specimen to be sure, but I can think of a few more immediate reasons that I would like to see him jailed. Or is it easier for you to think of me as a human being without feelings, Jack, knowing that you got me shot?”

Before a real fight could break out between them, Ms. Prurnell raised her hand.

“Alright, Dr. Chilton – we will think about your request. It’s not quite in the rulebook, as I’m sure you can guess, but I happen to think it’s not impossible, given the circumstances.”

That was Jack’s prompt to end the discussion and sadly he was clever enough not to give Frederick greater insight into his shaky position within the FBI by continuing the quarrel. Frederick comforted himself with the thought that the two would probably snap at each other from here all to the office on their drive back.

“I am looking forward to hearing from you. Ms. Prurnell, it was very nice to meet you.”

He shook her hand and then turned to Jack, sticking his hand to him like a challenge. Jack frowned at him, then smiled, and almost broke a couple of fingers as he squeezed his hand in return. In hindsight, Frederick should have seen that coming.

“Get well soon, Frederick.”

_Bastard._

Frederick waited to rub his aching knuckles until after Ms. Prurnell and Jack were out of the door.

-

Ms. Prurnell called him the day that Frederick was discharged from the hospital to tell him that she and Jack approved of his proposal. Frederick was sure that Jack had done very little approving. Getting his will despite him would have been a triumph to savour at any other time. It was a shame that the looming return home soured it.

He sat in the back of the taxi long enough for the driver to ask him if this was the right address. Like many inmates, Frederick had dreamed of home when he was kept from it, remembering an atmosphere of comfort, familiarity and safety more than anything else. Now that his house stood before him, all straight lines and smooth curves of concrete and glass, Frederick had a stone in the pit of his stomach.

Under the sweltering afternoon sun, he walked up to the front door, alone, with no noise but that of his footsteps, the taxi’s motor in the distance and a few birds overhead. The last time he had been here, he had also carried a small suitcase, though he had been stumbling in the opposite direction, down the flat, broad stairs towards the garage. The FBI had assured him his car was parked there now, too.

Also just like last time, the bright design on his glass front door, symmetrical vaulting arches emulating a plant or a fountain, was illuminated by bright rays of sunlight, looking warm and welcoming. He fumbled his keys and had to pick them up from the ground. At least it did something to lessen the sense of déjà-vue.

After entering the house, Frederick stood in the middle of his entrance hall for a moment. The clinical white of the walls and many of the pieces of perfectly angular furniture reminded him of the hospital. It continued in the kitchen, where the bright spotlessness woke a compulsive need to go searching for remnants of the deed so he would know – would not come down for coffee on a dusky morning and lift his cup to find dry blood under it. Turning his gaze, he looked at the northern dining room wall, which was just a large window, leading the gaze out onto a terrace. It was not the brittle nature of glass that made him feel cold, but rather the thought of seeing _him_ behind the window from the corner of his eyes; his mocking, smiling face as Hannibal watched him from outside like a rat in a cage, following the little maze Hannibal had laid out for him. The threat had crept inside without leaving shards on the ground. He’s smoke.

Frederick pushed the thoughts aside and marched on until he stood right in the middle of his kitchen by the island. Everything had been cleaned and disinfected, of course, the corpses long in a cemetery somewhere. He walked on into his living room, forcing himself not to look over his shoulder. His sofa could fit ten people, but now only one thing sat on it – the cane he had dropped as he had seen Abel Gideon’s corpse. He sat down for a moment as he took it in his hand, facing the wide-screen television, a bookcase outfitted with select hardcover editions of medical books and small decorative art pieces, and the entrance to the wine cellar.

Like a black, uncoiled snake, the wrought iron handrail peeked out from behind the wall that hid the staircase itself from view. Frederick got to his feet, his fingers sliding around the well-known shape of the metal orb in his hand. He took a step forward.

A beeping noise sounded in his head. It _was_ in his head, he knew that.

The tip of the cane clattered on the ground as he turned on his heel, but he remembered what had happened the last time he had raced around this particular corner, which was incidentally the only way out of the living room. Down the stairs was Gideon’s corpse. Outside the room stood Hannibal waiting, impeccably dressed under a suit of plastic.

He stumbled backwards onto the sofa, blindly grasping for the remote to drown out the voices in his head and the beating of his own heart like a hammer on an anvil. A sudden blast of canned sitcom laughter made him jump. The sun shone brightly through the ceiling-to-floor windows to his right, a few clouds painting wavering, moving, grotesquely lively shadows on his bright white wall.

 _Looks like a nice day outside_ , Frederick thought bitterly, wishing he would dare to move an inch from his spot perching on the edge of the cushion.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like alternative third season fanfics, but find yourself lacking some Hannigram around these parts, I would like to recommend my friend's brilliant story [ Let Ships Collide ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3476552/chapters/7632842). Because now that Hannibal is officially over, we need all the good fanfic we can get.
> 
> For this chapter, there is also a big TRIGGER WARNING: ANIMAL ABUSE. Proceed with caution or skip if this disturbs you.

He had to view it as extreme in vivo exposure, Frederick told himself, after several nights spent almost entirely sleepless. Since he had trapped himself in the living room for four hours on his first day back, Frederick proceeded with extreme caution in his own house. At first he had merely attempted to avoid the tainted areas, but he had to cross through the kitchen to get from the staircase to the front door, and his bedroom was on the second floor. There was the lounge with the piano where he could have taken up residence, but that was where he had woken up with a pistol in his hand. Besides, all the bathrooms were upstairs or in the far back part of the ground floor, meaning even if he slept in the lounge or the entrance hall (and he would be lying if he said he had not thought about it), he would eventually have to make the trip.

Traumas in all colours of the rainbow were a very common occurrence among his patients, so the treatment was rote to Frederick. He knew that trauma was not an experience, but an emotional response to an experience, and as such malleable and, to some extent, under his control At least that was what he told himself as he stood backed against the sink in his kitchen, looking for blood long scrubbed away on the refrigerator door.

Unsurprisingly, rationalising was easier than coping. Traumas presented themselves as heightened representations of reality, but Frederick was not sure how his memory could possible _oversell_ waking up covered in blood with three corpses propped up in his house. Short of moving out, which he was too proud to do after all, there was no way to remove the immediate triggers; and with Hannibal still out there and possibly looking to tie up loose ends, talking himself into ignoring the issue altogether seemed exceedingly foolish.

Frederick had considered going to a therapist, but he had never much liked people attempting to analyse him. During his studies, it had been mandatory for a set amount of time, but being a psychologist himself, he had no illusions about total objectivity and knew a therapist judged him like any other person. Consequently, he had spent most of his time in therapy subtly sugarcoating his answers and justifying himself. This reaction was no doubt a psychological quagmire of its own, but he would rather that it was not stirred up by colleagues of varying, usually low degrees of competence. Plus, there was his social standing to consider. He still had a reputation in the community to lose and doctor-patient confidentiality this or that, everybody gossiped.

The solution to the problem had not yet presented itself to Frederick when he fled his house on a rainy Wednesday evening, _Heart of Darkness_ in the pocket of his blazer. All of his contacts were at least partly, usually mostly professional, and none of them were the sort where he could show up unannounced and be in any other but his best mental shape. However, there was one person who had seen him at several shades of his worst already and Frederick would be happy to talk to anyone at this point – even if it meant driving to Will Graham’s house under the very see-through excuse of handing over the book he had lent him. Though he knew Will could probably figure out the state of his nerves with a glance, Frederick at least promised his dignity to tell Will that he had happened to be in the neighbourhood. As lies went that was a little difficult to sustain, seeing as Will’s quaint hermit’s cottage _had_ no neighbourhood, but he would cross that bridge when he got there.

The Jaguar pulled up in front of Will’s house in yet another recreation of events Frederick was trying to carefully put out of his mind. He took a measured breath, pulled carefully at his tie, checked the make-up with which he had covered the scar, and straightened his trousers. The meticulous state of his clothes in comparison to last time was reassuring. As was the lack of bloodstains.

He hurried towards the house through muddy grass squelching under his footsteps, the drizzle persistent. Five creaking stairs led up to the wooden terrace. No lights burned in the house, but the door stood at an angle, allowing a glimpse of gloomy darkness behind. Maybe Will had left it open so the dogs could go play. One might assume that a man living with roughly three dozen of them did not mind wet paw prints on the floor.

“Will?” Frederick asked, pushing the door open and switching on the lamp.

He took a step into the house and was hit by the smell of damp, rusty metal, tinged with a hint of the sick sweetness of overripe fruit. His gaze went over a room cluttered with mismatched furniture and the debris of daily living in the form of old clothes, mechanical parts, empty dog bowls.

Then he heard the whimper.

Arrayed in front of the fireplace laid six dogs in a straight line. Their blood had coloured the rug red. Five were motionless, but a particularly ugly, skinny little creature with an underbite and bulging, beady eyes staring directly at Frederick whined, paws twitching.

Wide-eyed, Frederick leaned down and picked up the dog to assess the damage. The greyish white fur was coloured red under its throat. He stared at the other ones, uncomprehending. There was one with its back slit, two with their guts spilling onto the carpet.

 _Who the hell did this?_ The thought was immediately followed by another: _Are they still in the house?_

Frederick stumbled backward, dog still in hand, then turned to run. A shape jumped in his way. He staggered back, almost slipping in the blood.

In front of him stood a taller dog, its back opened with a messy cut, blood congealed into clumps in its fur. Its tongue lolled out as he staggered in front of the door, right into Frederick’s way.

Impulsively, Frederick dropped his cane and hooked his finger into the back of the dog’s collar. It was too weak to fight and let itself be dragged along as Frederick made a break for the car. He forced the larger dog up into the driver’s seat and pushed it over to the middle to the passenger’s side.

Then Frederick froze. What if Will was half-dead in that house, too? Did he have a duty to go back and check? He raised his eyes and realised that Will’s car was gone. Figured. Will would not let those dogs go down without a fight.

Frederick got in the car and slammed the door. He rammed the key into the lock and stomped down on the gas pedal, wheels spraying dirt in all directions and motor roaring as the car shot down the road.

By the time he could think more complex thoughts than indulging his flight instinct, Will’s house was already out of view. In his lap, the small dog was still whimpering. The other one was quiet, staring out of the window in silence, eyes drooping. Frederick’s heart was beating a normal rhythm again. He had gotten away. With slippery fingers (blood? sweat?) he grasped his phone in his jacket pocket, allowing the car to slow down and almost approach the speed limit from the upper end as he scrolled through his contacts.

He did not have Will’s number, but, thanks to Kate Prurnell, he had Jack’s.

“Frederick.”

Jack sounded tired of him already and Frederick had not said a word yet.

“Good evening, Jack.”

“If you call to check in on our investigation, don’t worry: should anything substantial happen, you’ll be informed. We wouldn’t want you to feel out of the loop.”

His voice was sweet like burned sugar. Despite the dying dog in his lap, which was admittedly a pitiful sight, Frederick felt pleased that for once, he could pull the righteous card on Jack that the fed so loved to play on him.

“I am actually calling because I was just at Will Graham’s house to return a book. I did not find him, but there was an open door and five dead dogs arranged in a pretty deliberate manner on the ground.”

The silence at the other end was brief. Then, Jack barked something, muffled, away from the speaker.

“People are on their way. I’ll call Will. How many dogs? There should’ve been seven.”

“We have the full set, then. I have two with me, though I will not for much longer, judging by their state.”

Frederick glanced at the brown mutt currently bleeding out onto his passenger seat. He would not have gone out of his way to save them if he had been faced with the attacker, but in hindsight, he felt sudden, crushing relief that his first instinct had been to take with him whichever creatures were still alive. It was hardly heroic, but Frederick had never claimed the superiority of his ethical compass. Considering the violent chaos that festered in his life lately, it was simply calming to know he had not yet become jaded beyond the most basic human compassion.

“Can someone over there find me the address of an animal clinic?”

Jack handed the phone to one of his underlings.

-

A frantic Google search on the other end of the line later, Frederick followed the dotted trail on his GPS map to a Baltimore emergency veterinarian. The sight of him with a dog dripping blood cradled against his chest and another traipsing drowsily behind him with its back opened, Frederick still crouching down to hold the dog by its collar, certainly made the night of the other sleep-deprived pet owners sitting in the clinic foyer a little more interesting. While small-and-ugly was rushed into an operation theatre, the bigger one had apparently gotten lucky. Frederick was allowed to watch while it had its back shaved and stitched up under local anaesthesia. He would have rather not, but the nurse had ushered him in before he had a chance to protest.

“What’s his name?” The doctor asked him, his ancient, shrivelled face leaning close over the operation table.

“I could not tell you. He belongs to a – friend.”

Fellow victim. Close enough. For a moment, Frederick admired and envied the old man’s steady handiwork with the needle.

“I see. I know you might not wanna get your friend in trouble, but this is a case for animal control.”

“Oh,” Frederick shook his head with a lopsided smile, “you need not worry about that. You will not find anyone who takes better care of their dogs.”

“So what happened here?”

“That is the million dollar question.”

The dog, drugged to the point of weakly tail-twitching happiness, was placed on a blanket and in his arms when the stitching was done. Frederick carried him out into the waiting room and awkwardly put him down on his lap after he had sat down. Characterless motel modern art hung in IKEA frames on the eggshell-white walls. Uncomfortable wooden chairs lined the room. Opposite him sat a woman, and a child drooling on her coat sleeve in her sleep, with a covered bird cage on the chair next to them. A rotund cat in a carrier mewled ceaselessly. Otherwise, the room was quiet but for the receptionist’s turning of her magazine’s pages. Frederick settled back against the too-small backrest, his arm trapped and slowly falling asleep under the dog’s head.

When the door banged open, the noise of it hitting the wall echoed through the foyer. Will stood in the doorway, pale as a sheet, out of breath, with his dark curls windblown. He cast a desperate look into the room, meeting Frederick’s eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

Will crossed the distance between the door and Frederick in four great strides. The energy seemed to drain from his body like air from a balloon when he came to a halt. Will sank to his knees next to Frederick’s legs, paying no attention to the looks the soccer mom with the bird and the fat cat owner were giving him as he cradled the dog’s face between his hands and leaned in.

“Winston,” he muttered. “Hey.” His voice failed.

_Winston._ Frederick felt vaguely like he should have guessed that. It was such a stock name for a dog. Clearly, in Will’s case, this throwaway name did not signify the value assigned to his pet. He looked down at him sitting on the floor, awkwardly attempting to extract his arm from the muddle of Will’s petting hands and Winston’s whimpering snout. This proved to be impossible without leaving the weakened dog’s head drooping, so instead Frederick simply sat there, looking at Will all but pressing his nose into Winston’s fur while he was uncomfortably aware of the eyes of every other person in this room on them.

“The doctor assured me he will be fine,” Frederick said, in a hushed voice. “The other one is still being operated on. Small, white-ish, underbite...”

“Buddy,” Will said, looking up at him briefly like he had just now recognised Frederick. “Will he make it?”

“They were not sure.”

Will slowly nodded his head, expression dazed. His shoulders sagged under an invisible weight.

“Do you want to hold Winston?” Frederick said, in an attempt to get Will up from his tragically ridiculous position on the floor. The receptionist looked at them like she considered whether to transfer Will to a human ER because of a nervous breakdown.

“Let’s not move him more than necessary,” Will murmured.

Thankfully, Will did feel motivated to pull himself up onto the chair next to Frederick, his hand still resting on Winston’s head.

“You found them?” He stopped himself, a gear visibly clicking into place. “You’re fine, right? You weren’t attacked?”

“No. But thank you for thinking of me _almost_ right after two pets.”

Frederick raised a brow, but Will did not react to the taunt, again focused on Winston. There was something to be said for his own in-court analysis of Will, Frederick considered. Right now, he did remind him of some of his psychopath patients, having known Will both out of his clinic and inside. The smooth-talking, attentive, aware part of him was the mask, one that Hannibal had helped him mould after his own image. When Frederick and Will had first met, Will had not had it yet. He had not bothered to hide his oddness then, and now that the stress had built up enough, he was again foregoing all pretences of manners and normality.

Unlike Frederick’s patients, however, who usually hid something animalistic and brutal under the sheen, Will was simply maladjusted. It occurred to Frederick that despite his strange behaviour and bluntness, he preferred Will like this. Possibly because of his experiences at work, it always put him on edge when Will gave him his mocking, calculated smile.

“I wanted to return your book,” Frederick continued, finally. “Your door was open, but I thought it might be for the dogs to come and go as they please. Apparently, something else did.”

Will looked up, but not at him.

“After everything that happened to the two of us? Hannibal could’ve been in that house. You could’ve died, Frederick,” he said apathetically, shaking his head.

Frederick swallowed and pushed that idea far from himself.

“Prior experiences suggests otherwise.”

Will snorted.

“I would not trust too much in your immortality.”

“I wanted to know if you were inside. What choice did I have but to go into the house?”

“You could have called me and waited in the car.”

That had genuinely never occurred to him. Frederick being there had already been based on such a clumsy excuse that calling Will out to fetch his book would have been plain silly.

“If I had, Winston and Buddy would in all likelihood be dead,” Frederick argued instead. “I very much doubt that you would have preferred that outcome to a risk to my safety.”

“I’d rather no one died in my house, dog or human.”

“Welcome to the club.”

They sat in silence, the air conditioning a low whine in the distance and the warmth of Winston’s weight on his knees growing steadily more uncomfortable, not helped by having to lean back so he would not breath directly into Will’s mop of dishevelled hair as he whispered into his dog’s ears. Finally, a nurse emerged from the back, calling Frederick’s name. Will jumped to his feet.

The conversation between them revealed that Buddy was probably going to pull through, but had to stay the night for observation. Will vanished into one of the rooms with her, leaving Frederick with Winston, who was slowly shaking off the effects of the sedative and moved his head to drool on Frederick’s wrist and then spread the slobber around by lovingly lapping his skin.

Suppressing a sigh, Frederick scratched Winston’s head, fingers carding through the fur, unable to work up disgust or annoyance anymore. Without adrenaline to supply him with energy, the sleepless nights of the last week were catching up with him. He let his head drop back against the wall, contemplating the white chipboard covering above him.

“I thought you were a cat person.”

Frederick quickly straightened his back.

Will looked down at Winston, paler than the ceiling. “Jack wants me to have a look at... my house,” he said, oddly stretching the last two words. He sounded as tired as Frederick felt. “I’m going to call a cab, but I don’t know if they’ll let me take Winston when he’s like this.”

“What about your car? When I left, it was gone.”

Killing all the dogs and then stealing the car was a pretty confused crime, especially considering the person would have had to walk all the way out to Will’s hermit residence. Maybe it had been several people?

“It’s in the shed. The motor is...” Will trailed off, deeming the information unnecessary. “Zeller dropped by to drive me to the FBI this morning.”

“The FBI will want to take my statement as well. You can drive with me. After all, your dogs already got their hair on everything.”

Blood, too, but Frederick thought it unhelpful to remind Will of that right now.

“You did more than you had to.”

Frederick raised a brow at the tone. It sounded like Will had wanted to say ‘more than I thought you would’.

“You should go home. It’s late,” Will added.

“Do you find the thought of returning to _your_ home very comforting right now?”

Will halted, then slowly lowered his head in an approximation of a nod – not to the question, but to understanding what Frederick wanted to tell him about his own house and the ghosts in it.

“Well, then...”

“Yes. We should leave your dog, though. Carrying him around will only put stress on the wound.”

Frederick got up and Will took Winston from his arms, but instead of approaching a nurse, he held him, mute, staring straight ahead. Frederick was fairly certain Will had not looked that traumatised when he was on trial for several cannibalistic murders he did not commit. That said, a nervous wreck was more Frederick’s area of expertise than dying dogs, so this could be considered an improvement, if one tended towards baseless optimism. He turned to the reception. 

“The police called Mr. Graham in so they can find out who did this,” Frederick told her, letting sadness tinge the last few words. Never a bad idea to tug a few heartstrings when you needed a favour. “I do not think he is safe to drive right now. Can we leave Winston here for the night?”

The receptionist nodded her head and to his relief, Will gave Winston up without a fight.

In silence, they made their way down the stairs. Frederick’s legs were stiff and half-asleep from holding Winston and his cane was still at Will’s house. The near-chronic lack of sleep these days did nothing to keep his knees steady, either. He held on to the railing and took the stairs one careful step at a time.

When he had arrived at the bottom, an outstretched arm appeared in his field of vision. Will had waited for him.

“Do you need a hand getting to the car?”

“No, I can manage,” Frederick said.

Will took a doubtful look at him before he shrugged. Frederick led the way to his car and realised that without the sarcasm that felt uncalled for after Will’s friendly offer, he did not know how to approach him, so he said nothing.

The blood on Frederick’s seat covering had Will grip the rooftop of the car for a moment, but then he swung into the passenger’s seat. Frederick slid in on the other side and opened the windows to get rid of the smell of wet dog and blood.

“Thank you,” Will said, staring out the window, as they had just driven past the city limits, thirty minutes after they had last spoken.

-

Three FBI cars crowded the street in front of Will’s house. A couple of agents were caught in the pale glare of Frederick’s headlights. One of them walked into the house, the other approached the car. Next to him, Will inhaled deeply before he opened the door.

Frederick trailed after him into the house where Jack waited with half a dozen of his colleagues. The stench inside was sweet and cloying. The dogs’ bodies had small number tags next to them.

“I hope you didn’t move too much,” Will told Jack. His voice was blank.

“No.” A moment of hesitation. “I’m not sure this is a good idea right now.”

“I do it for strangers, Jack. I can do it for them.”

Will smiled, eyes empty. He was staring at his dogs. After a moment, Jack waved at his people and Frederick to follow him. With a glance over his shoulder, Frederick did so, although he was admittedly curious.

The clouds had cleared up and the warm summer air smelled like earth and leaves. Cicadas chirped. It was a lovely evening. Inside, Will would now put himself in the shoes of the man who had cut up his dogs.

Since he did not feel invited to the congregation of whispering FBI agents, Frederick returned to lean against his car. However, one of them followed him with a clipboard. He gave a statement and showed him Conrad’s _Heart of Darkness._

“Just in case your boss thinks I have spent my afternoon making mincemeat of these dogs,” he said, before he opened the door for the agent to check his bloodstained seats.

Will emerged while the agent was taking pictures of his car. He pressed the heel of his hands into his eyes and rubbed his face.

“Revenge,” he said, looking some inches to the right of Jack’s face, avoiding to look at his face. “For the lives I have taken. Wounded backs, slit throats, gutting...”

Like Bloom, like Jack and Hobbs – like Will. Frederick frowned.

“ _You_ were the one gutted. Why punish a fellow victim? And why your dogs, not just you?” Jack asked, marking the first time in history that he and Frederick concurred in a thought.

“I’m... an accessory. I could have done something. I could have done more...” Will trailed off. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know yet.”

Jack paused for a moment. “Most people don’t think through their works as much as the likes of Hannibal do,” he said softly. “Affect doesn’t always make sense.”

“Yeah,” Will muttered, breathing deeply. “There was a lot of rage.”

Will was holding back on purpose, Frederick realised with a sudden bolt of recognition. He had spent weeks trying to pull conscious and unconscious thoughts out of this man. He had to admit (grudgingly) that he had never figured out how to do it when Will did not want him too, but at least he could see that he was hiding _something_ from Jack.

“Considering how widely the press spread what happened in Hannibal’s house, that doesn’t narrow down our suspects much. We’ll go through Alana’s, Abigail’s and my family and acquaintances first. And you, Will... you need to stay someplace else for a while,” Jack said.

“With Winston and Buddy,” Will answered.

“It’s going to be difficult to find a hotel that allows pets on such short notice,” one of the agents noted.

“I would my offer my home, but with Bella right now... do you have any other friends? We will park a surveillance car in front of their home. You’ll be safe.”

The corners of Will’s lips twisted upwards.

“Hannibal was the only person who wanted to be my friend lately.”

A short lull appeared in the conversation as Jack and the agents seemed to think of alternatives and Will stared at his own feet. Frederick hesitated just for a second before he took a quick step forward.

“You could stay at my house, Will.”

Jack’s head whipped up.

“What is the matter now?” Frederick asked, imitating the patience he had used to talk to children back when he had that atrocious internship at a teens-and-under psychiatrist after his fourth semester.

“You are a little more altruistic than I’m used to today.”

“Not nearly as much as you think.” Just the presence of a living, breathing human being, even one that was condescendingly hostile towards him most of the time, was better than an empty home. However, Frederick was not about to tell Jack and a gaggle of agents about his deteriorating mental state; his dignity could barely take that he knew Will had certainly already figured out that he feared being lonely. “I have enough bed- and bathrooms that I would never have to see Will or his dogs. Also, my security system is better than that of any hotel you will find in Baltimore, I have seen to that.” He paused. “Of course, it is merely an offer.”

They looked at Will. Just as Frederick had calculated, the traumatised lethargy worked in his favour. He was offering a roof over Will’s head and a place where he could stay with the remnants of his pack. On top of that (which bruised Frederick’s ego just a little, but he would _try_ to take it as a compliment), Frederick had never managed to intimidate Will, not even with a gun pointed straight at his face or the keys to Will’s cell in his hands. He was evidently not a disquieting presence to Will.

“I have lived in Frederick’s... rooms before,” Will said quietly, raising his brows. “I hope the food at your house is better.”

Frederick could not keep himself from smiling. Jack could.

“I don’t like this.”

“I will not eat him – which is more than I can say for other psychologists that you have let him run off with,” Frederick said, turning to Jack.

“If we believe Mr. Gideon, we’ve also established you have a knack for getting into peoples’ heads,” Jack shot back, leaning in so close Frederick found himself taking a cautious step back.

“Leave him,” Will said. “It won’t be for long.” He glanced at Frederick. “We need to get Winston on the way to your house.”

Frederick nodded his head. That was a fair price to pay for company.


	8. Chapter 8

“It’s cold,” were the first words out of Will’s mouth when they entered Frederick’s house.

Frederick shifted the dog in his arms. Will had successfully convinced the nurses that he would be watching the dogs as close as any doctor during the night, so both Winston and Buddy had been handed back to them (since he was both handsome and unhinged in a way that was pitiable rather than scary, the nurses had barely stood a chance against Will’s charms). Frederick was carrying the smaller dog wrapped in a cheap sheet.

“You can adjust the heater in your room.”

“I meant that your house looks,” Will paused, “like – a movie set.”

“Are you always this complimentary to your hosts?”

He had expected a tired smile, a come-back, at least a glance. Will was only staring down at Winston.

Balancing the dog in one arm as he clutched on to the railing, Frederick led the way up the stairs. The guest room was big: even with a king-size bed, an armchair, a TV and a desk, there was still space to spare. Frederick remembered that when he had looked at the floor plan before buying the house, the room had been labelled CH1 and was meant to provide space for lively offspring and their errant toys which he would probably never have.

Will set down his suitcase, an ancient object made of brown leather so scuffed it was a wonder hastily packed clothes were not spilling out of it on every corner. They placed Winston and Buddy on the bed. Fleeting concern for his black-and-white designer coverlet considering potential bloodstains made Frederick realise the bed was not made.

“The linens are in the cupboard.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Will answered curtly. “This is fine for tonight.”

 _Very well then._ Frederick was too tired to argue. Will had spend weeks on a pallet in a cell, he would survive a bed a without sheets. Approximating a shrug, a brief twitch of his shoulders, he turned to the door.

“A pleasant night, Will.”

-

Safe for his guest, the house was quiet as a cemetery and Frederick could hear Will move about the room across the hall. At first it did not help his nerves, but eventually he began to differentiate sounds: the shuffle of feet over the floor, Winston whimpering, the bed creaking. Dropping in and out of consciousness, he did not question why Will was not in bed. Selfishly, he was comforted by his restlessness and the steady noise it provided, lulled finally into a trance-like state that hopefully aspired to become sleep.

There was a loud _bang_. Frederick sat up straight in bed. His heart beat in his throat. He held his breath, but he could still hear it.

No, it was not his own breath.

He never switched off the bedroom lights anymore, so he could see no one was in his room. Resisting the undignified urge to peek under his bed to make sure, Frederick got up and opened the door.

Will stood in the middle of the hallway, the door to his room wide open. He was breathing hard. His shirt and hair stuck to him wet with sweat and his hands trembled.

“Will?”

“Winston needs... something to drink,” he spat out.

Frederick peered over his shoulder into the room. With his head on his paws, Winston laid on the bed, sleeping more soundly than Frederick had in months.

“He’s asleep, Will.”

“But... he, Buddy – needs – I don’t have... bowls for...”

A strangled sound ended the sentence as Will gulped in air without taking any. Frederick had a brief flashback to his first job after college, the graveyard shift on a psychiatric hospital ward. The iron chain that seemed to have wound itself around his ribcage slackened. This was hardly an ideal situation, but it was nothing he had not dealt with before.

“You are right, we forgot the dog bowls,” he said, softening his voice as he positioned himself in front of Will. “Would you like to get them?”

Will stared through him. Frederick doubted this was about dog bowls, but he did not think Will could now put in words what had triggered the panic attack and he might as well start with something that got Will concentrating on the real world. When Will tried to push past him, he raised his hands.

“I need you to do something for me first.”

There was no sign that Will was listening.

“Will, can you do something for me?”

He pointed at the handle of the open door.

Though Will turned his head, Frederick did not think he really understood a word he was saying. He lifted his hand in front of Will’s face and slowly moved it towards his arm, giving him an opportunity to step back. When he did not, he lightly took hold of his wrist to guide him to touch the handle.

Will could not be moved towards it. Instead, he jerked his arm backwards and grabbed Frederick’s hand. His palm was damp and warm.

Frederick had never liked offering parts of his own body for patients to ground themselves, instead handed out plastic bottles and pillows or any other objects that could not be spontaneously rammed into anyone’s eye with the sharpest end first. Holding hands with his patients represented a bleeding-hearts school of psychology he did not prescribe to.

Of course, he also did not usually practice in his pyjamas, so the rules where already bent.

“Great,” Frederick said, eliminating the sarcasm that wanted to sneak in as Will squeezed his fingers like a stress ball. “Now, I need you to breath with me. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

Using the technique described, Frederick took a few measured breaths.

“One the count of one, you breath in. Two, you breath out.”

A minimal nod of his head. Will held on so hard that Frederick was gradually losing the feeling in his fingertips. He started out with a fairly speedy one-two pattern so Will could fall in easily. He did what he was told. One, in, two, out. He swallowed his tongue, his breath hitched multiple times, but Frederick waited for him and Will always came back to the rhythm. One, in, two, out.

From there, Frederick slowed his count down a fraction each time, until Will’s breath was down to a normal rate. His gaze was steady on Frederick’s face now. His eyes looked almost grey in the light, like the ocean on a stormy day. There was a narrow ring of yellow around the iris, and flecks of the same muted gold muddying the subdued blue. Frederick realised that Will had never before held eye contact with him long enough for him to figure out his eye colour.

“Very good. Let us go downstairs and get the bowls,” Frederick said, making use of the fact that holding on to him, Will was at least more mobile than if he had attached his vice-like grip to the door handle. One had to take advantages as they came.

This time, Will mumbled some form of assent. They walked down the stairs hand in hand, Will a little behind him, silently waiting for Frederick to take each step without his cane.

Downstairs, Frederick swallowed his own discomfort as he fingered the wall for the light switch and forced himself not to close his eyes as the room turned bright.

There was no body on the kitchen counter. 

But there once had been. That was the issue in trying to comfort Will as well, was it not? Frederick remembered from his years in medicine that he had always had a special lack of impatience for nurses and doctors that crooned ‘it’ll be fine, everything’s okay’ at their patients while shoving tubes down their throat or examining wounds with bone showing through bleeding flesh. If you denied reality so blatantly, how was a patient going to think you competent?

And would telling Will that he was safe not be the same thing? Frederick did not believe it, after all. Hannibal had forced himself into their spaces before – deeper, much deeper for Will than for Frederick –, and what rational person could promise Will he would leave him alone? Or Frederick for that matter? They were Hannibal’s loose ends.

“I do not have meat in the house,” Frederick said, to tear himself away from the thoughts. He had to forget his own trauma for the moment or the two of them would stand here all night. Every terrible thing was theoretically repeatable; everyone could be assaulted twice, robbed twice, shot twice. He was making Hannibal special again. Realistically, he would not return tonight, when there was a FBI car sitting outside the house. “We will have to buy some tomorrow.”

He had feared that might send Will into another spell of hyperventilation, but apparently he had let go of his replacement problem just a little.

“Water is more important,” he said quietly.

Nodding his head, Frederick dug through his cupboard for a dish that was in any way fit to be given to dogs. Unsurprisingly, he did not own many of those. An old, dented mixing bowl from college days finally resurfaced behind two pots. He handed it to Will to test his motor skills. While his hands still shook, Will managed to hold the bowl relatively steady while water splattered into it from the faucet.

The way upstairs was as quiet as the way down had been. Will put the bowl of water on the floor next to the side of the bed on which the dogs were sleeping, then sat down in an armchair. If it were not for the haunted look in his eyes, the pale colour of his skin and the fact that he still held on to Frederick’s hand, Frederick would have said he had snapped out of it.

After a while of standing next to him, Frederick could feel the adrenaline subsiding and tiredness settling in his bones again.

“I need to sit down, Will,” he said, pointing at the bed.

Reluctantly, Will let go of his hand. Frederick curled and uncurled his fist until the blood rushed back to his fingers. Then, he picked up the ugly dog with the underbite and its blanket and placed it on Will’s lap before he sat down next to Winston.

There was another pause. Will had rested both his hands on the dog, thumb brushing over his head.

“How are you feeling?” Frederick asked, against the sound of the clock on the wall that seemed impossibly loud in his ears, but receded as his voice cut through its mechanic heartbeat.

“I’m a murderer,” Will answered.

Well, that was certainly a sort of emotion, albeit a complex one.

“Attempted murderer,” Frederick corrected. “And you had a reason.”

Will chuckled. “Everyone has their reasons.”

“I mean that most people would argue it was justified.”

Will glanced up at him and down at Buddy. He had stopped looking at him directly. For Will’s parameters, that was a good sign; his own brand of odd normal.

“Would you?”

“I try not to deal in ethics. But I _can_ say that I wish you would have been successful.” Reflexively, he raised his hand to the scar on his cheek. “It would have spared me a lot of trouble.”

Looking at his feet again, Will quieted down for a moment.

“I’m not talking about Hannibal,” he said, finally.

Frederick went through the list of people in Will’s life again.

“Abigail’s death was not your fault.” He hesitated. “Objectively. Though from what you described to me of the situation, Hannibal certainly intended for you to feel that way.”

“He was successful,” Will said blandly. “He made it my fault. My decision. But I’m ...” The sentence trailed off into nothing.

Since Will could evidently be reasoned with again, Frederick tried a different approach.

“You do not like me. Why did you take my hand just now?”

Will seemed to reflect on the question, possibly the first time he had ever done so in a therapy session with Frederick without the help of drugs.

“Basic herd instinct. A reassurance that I am not the only one left alive. Seems strange anyone has survived my presence as long as you have, really. People around me die – I can’t even protect my dogs,” Will said and smiled humourlessly. “Why not use you? You are not a dangerous person. You make dangerous mistakes, but you couldn’t even shoot me when you thought I’d signed your death warrant by calling Jack. You don’t have it in you.”

“You make that sound like it is a bad thing,” Frederick pointed out, curious and with the hair on the back of his neck standing. He had suspected something like that when Will followed him home, but Will’s tone was more critical than one would expect.

“It’s a disadvantage to be a rat when you are surrounded by hawks, don’t you think?” Will looked at the ceiling. “I have it in me. I knew that, but Hannibal showed me where. Make me a murderer,” he paused thoughtfully, “that was his design.”

“Why?”

“Because he is one. How else would I be his friend?”

“That does make sense,” Frederick allowed. “Thank you kindly for choosing such a beautiful spirit animal for me, by the way,” he added, seeing a brief smile on Will’s face in the corner of his eyes, before he got up and closed the door. Will had given him an idea that was as unprofessional as he considered hand-holding, but at three am in the morning he was running out of other plans.

Frederick picked up the key hidden in a drawer under white bed sheets and locked up, leaving the key on top of the squat linen cupboard.

“What are you doing?”

He turned around to look at Will and cocked his head. “Hannibal’s sway over you is a problem, I agree. We cannot solve it tonight. But if you are worried how much he has changed your nature... I am not. I do not think you _have it in you_ to hurt someone who gave you no reason.”

It was a lie that he was not worried at all. Perhaps Will knew that, he was, after all, supposed to be almost supernaturally perceptive. But he would also be able to see that despite that, Frederick had locked himself in a room with him and was convinced he was not taking too big a risk. Will was a killer, yes, but Frederick had known many killers and despite the occasional misstep, as with Gideon and Hannibal, he was still convinced of his own skills in rating them. This man did not kill for entertainment or out of some convoluted inner drive. Vengeance and self-defence were Will’s motives; archaic, predictable ones.

It was not exactly trust in his kind nature or anything as flattering as that, but it was more than most people were willing to give Will these days. Perhaps if someone showed he believed in the possibility that he could pull himself together and be good, for a while, then it would not feel like insanity to Will to think the same of himself and defy Hannibal’s programming.

“That is bold, Frederick.” The sarcasm in Will’s voice did nothing to hide his confusion.

“I was always known for keeping an open mind to unconventional methods.”

Frederick stretched out next to Winston on the cool cotton sheets. The bed was broad enough for Will to add himself without causing too much awkwardness should he wish to. However, he stayed in the armchair, contemplating him, and Frederick was aware of his presence even as his eyes drifted shut, much more acutely than he had been when Will only existed as a few noises across the hallway. Helping Will, fixing what Hannibal had broken, was a task his ego found appealing, but he had his own reasons for being here, too. _Basic herd instinct._

“I will probably fall asleep,” Frederick said, hoping he was right. “You can wake me if you need me.”

“I might,” Will said after a moment.


	9. Chapter 9

Frederick startled himself awake several times during the night, but the picture he saw never changed. There were the two dogs, unmoving, and Will in his chair, either awake and staring into space or asleep, head lolling to the side. Just once, Frederick opened his eyes and saw Will look him straight in the eyes, as if he had been watching him, his expression a perfect blank. A shiver worked its way down Frederick’s spine. He squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be fast asleep because he knew if he tried to run, he would not even get as far as the locked door.

Morning came with the sun throwing light through the gap between the curtains, a meticulously bordered splash of golden colour that was superimposed on the stark black and white of the coverlet and across Frederick’s face. He blinked and shielded his eyes with a hand. The door was open and the room empty but for the small, ugly dog still curled up in the armchair.

As he stepped outside, he heard the water in the bathroom next door running and went to use the one at the end of the hallway. In the light of morning, last night seemed like a bizarre nightmare. Had he dreamed it, though, it would have been a more original night terror for once and with a little cynicism one could work up gratitude for that. After Frederick had showered and shaved and put on slacks and a crisp pale blue shirt, he felt almost like a human being again, too. The wonders four hours of sleep could do.

He met his guest in the kitchen downstairs, where he was refilling the water bowl for a tail-wagging Winston.

“Your dog is resilient,” Frederick commented because he had no strength to address last night in any productive fashion before his first cup of coffee.

Will turned around. Obviously, he had skipped the shave, but then, Frederick had very rarely seen him look anything but three days past his last meeting with a razor, which created an aura of handsome carelessness only underlined by the shaggy head of unruly hair and unfocused gaze. Part of his charm, if one wanted to call it that.

“He needs food. Is there a store nearby?”

“Down the street. Fifteen minutes by foot, but you could probably ask the FBI camping outside to drive you. They are not here for _my_ benefit.”

In contrast, Jack was probably looking forward to the day that Frederick met his demise, now more than ever. Will set the bowl down. A few drops of water splashed over the rim. Frederick had a brief, disorienting moment watching phantom blood spill from his memory onto his pristine kitchen floor.

“Do you need anything?” Will asked, tearing him from the macabre image.

“Uh,” Frederick made. It occurred to him that that was the most ordinary piece of conversation he might have had in quite some time. With a quick shake of his head, he opened the fridge. “Milk,” he said. “And whatever you want for breakfast, providing you do not like organic whole-grain granola with dried berries.”

Will raised his brows.

“Do you like whole-grain granola?”

Closing the fridge door, Frederick looked at him like Will had asked him whether he liked putting his hand on a hotplate.

“My doctor likes me to like organic whole-grain granola with dried berries,” he clarified.

Nodding his head, Will patted his trousers, finding the square bulge of what Frederick guessed was his wallet in his pocket. “I’m going to get some bread for us,” Will said, striding to the door.

-

Frederick sat down in the living room and only noticed that the dog had followed him when he had picked up the latest copy of the _Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience_ and found a wet, black nose poking out over the pages. Winston jumped up onto the couch.

“Should I be surprised Will did not teach you manners?” Frederick asked, as the dog put his paws up on his thigh, looking at him with an expectant gaze, tongue sticking out of its mouth. Immediately, he chided himself for talking to a dog. He had always found people cooing infantile nonsense at animals somewhat bewildering and those who attempted to have conversations with them made Frederick immediately question whether they were unfit to talk to creatures that might actually give articulate answers.

Experimentally, he ran his hand over the dog’s head. It was unexpected that he had come to him now that he had a choice. Animals had never particularly liked Frederick, going all the way back to the bird he and his sibling used to own as a children, which would sit happily squeaking on his brother’s hand, cosy up to his sister’s cheek while perching on her shoulder, and then bite his fingers when Frederick attempted to touch it. Even the cats that he had praised in front of Will never seemed to take to him. Perhaps he had never tried enough. It seemed useless to him to earn the trust of an animal and, considering his lack of talent in making lasting friendships with humans, always had felt a bit like an unequal substitute. With time, he assumed he could probably manage to make a something that eventually adored everyone who fed it like him, but what sort of badge of honour was that?

Regardless, Winston demanded attention, putting his snout right up in Frederick’s face. He pushed it gently away, running his hand through the shaggy fur and wondered what breed he was. A golden retriever or shepherd mixed in with a few other things along the line? His fur looked odd, flecked with ashen grey and black like he had rolled in the dirt even though he was clean, and the brown eyes were just as dim-wittedly devoted as those of most dogs.

Though he was trying very hard here to argue himself out of making a connection with Will’s dog, the way it put its head in his lap, just like it had in the clinic, was just slightly touching. Evidently it was smart enough to know the man who had saved it, or at least to hone in on the one person around ready to dispense affection. Still, he was not about to sacrifice his couch covers for the dog’s happiness. Frederick stretched over to where a blanket laid folded under two pillows, opened it and nudged Winston to the side so he could spread it out next to himself. The dog returned to his spot as soon as Frederick stopped pushing against his chest.

Frederick tried to read, but Winston kept nipping at his fingers and putting his head in front of the pages, like he realised what was dividing Frederick’s attention. With a sigh, he laid the magazine aside.

“You are probably just hungry,” he theorised out loud. “The house of a vegetarian must be disappointing to you. It is to me, too, most of the time.”

Winston whimpered. At least it was not a complete monologue, Frederick thought to himself with a sardonic smile. This impulse to talk to a dog in combination with his recent troubles with sleep and fear of his own home made him wonder whether he was beginning his devolution into, well, Will – a quasi-hermit shut up with non-threatening animals somewhere in the wilderness. The fantasy was almost soothing, but Frederick realised the moment he tried to put himself into it that his pride would not allow for it. For Will, retreat seemed to be simply the way he preferred to live his life, but for Frederick, it would have been capitulation.

The doorbell rang, tearing him from his thoughts. He nudged Winston off his lap, and the dog followed him. The shadow behind the frosted glass door was carrying bags in one hand and looked enough like Will that Frederick skipped his usual moment of paranoia and opened up.

“Hey, Winston,” Will said, stepping in, leaning down to ruffle the dogs head. “Hey,” he added, looking at Frederick.

After kicking the door shut behind himself, he continued on his way into the kitchen. However, halfway through the open central space of Frederick’s first floor, he turned around, frowning.

Frederick realised that Winston was still sitting by his side instead of having bounded after his owner. A small, bemused smile pulled at Frederick’s lips. “Good boy,” he said, before he himself followed Will, Winston on his heels.

Will sat the bags down on the counter.

“Are you stealing my dogs?”

“Trust me, I will be happy for you to relocate your zoo once more, when the time comes.”

Whatever that time would be. Frederick was not going to press Will for an answer. A late-night therapy session combined with some dog hair on his couch was a small price to pay for some – albeit questionable – company. While Will unpacked his bags, placed the milk in the fridge and the bread on the counter, Frederick let his fingers run though the hair on Winston’s side.

“You don’t like this house anymore,” Will said, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Frederick was getting used to his erratic observations. Perhaps it had been something in the way he focused too much on the dog Will had picked up on, or how he moved around the kitchen without touching more than he had to, which Frederick had observed in himself, too.

“Would you?”

“No, but I don’t usually live here.”

“Surprisingly, managing property sales from a hospital is a challenge. Besides, I am not going to let Hannibal drive me from my own home.”

Will scoffed.

“There is no pride in dealing with Hannibal, Frederick. You should know better.”

“Well, I am not ready to lay down and let him rule over my life just yet,” Frederick said, testily.

“I used to think I had a choice, too.”

Wordlessly, Frederick took two plates and knives from the cabinets and placed them on the kitchen island. He did not want to speak of Hannibal’s imagined omnipotence before coffee, either.

“Do you have another bowl?” Will asked, after a moment of silence, leaning over the shopping bags.

“Are you interested in my organic muesli after all?”

The fleeting shadow of a smile touched Will’s lips, fast enough for Frederick to wonder if he had imagined it.

“I need to mix the dog food. I need a pot, too, and a spoon.”

“Do they not sell that in cans anymore?”

From the depths of his cabinets, Frederick produced another metal bowl like the one he had given Will for water last night, as well as a pot. Will had already found his cutlery. As the out-of-the-way placement of all his kitchen utensils revealed, Frederick barely managed to work up the motivation to cook for himself most days and here Will was about to prepare dog food by hand. Frederick wondered, and doubted, if he spent that much care on feeding himself.

“Would you like to eat canned food all your life?” Will asked, instead of an answer. He unearthed a thick package of minced meat wrapped in plastic from a bag. Winston’s ears perked up at the rustle of cellophane. From his spot next to Frederick’s chair, he watched intently

“At this point I wish I had,” Frederick gave back. “An interest in high cuisine has not done much good for me.”

This time, Will did smile, though without humour.

The minced meat was stirred with water and ended up simmering on the stove while Frederick got up and cut off two slices of the white bread that Will had brought. However, he paused in spreading the butter as he watched Will stare into the pot like that was where he had lost his will to move, head slightly tilted to the side, like an oddly placed statue.

“Will?”

He was really too tired for a repeat of yesterday night, but if it came to that, he would rather catch it early.

“I’m fine,” Will said, after a second. He did not explain his moment of contemplation, but turned to Frederick with a smile like a challenge – one that Frederick had gotten used to see already when it was still behind bars and glass walls. “You are quite the attentive psychologist when you’re not at work.”

“Very funny,” Frederick replied, flatly.

“It is. I always thought you were bad at your job, but you’re not. You are actually competent.”

The surprise in his voice was honest, which did nothing to quell Frederick’s growing annoyance. He raised a brow at him.

“Competent – is that supposed to be a compliment? A passing grade?”

After lowering the temperature on the stove, Will sat down with him at the kitchen island.

“Yes. A competent psychologist helps people. Some would call that a worthwhile goal.”

At this point, Will was clearly mocking him. He knew very well Frederick had not gone into this profession for the good of mankind and now he was attempting to make him feel ashamed for it. Frederick was not about to play that game with him.

“Then let me extend my benevolent therapeutic goodwill to you: You need to let go of the idea that you are responsible for Abigail Hobbs’ death or you will not get better.”

It was a blunt-force attack delivered with a soft voice and not, in Frederick’s opinion, even untrue. If Will wanted to discuss problematic behaviour, then Frederick did not think he and his professional motivations were to take centre stage in a room that included Will Graham just scarce hours past a panic attack.

However, Will did not react with anger, as he had expected. He picked up the bread instead.

“We had a plan to capture Hannibal,” he said calmly. “Me and Jack. I was the bait.”

“I am assuming all of this was not its desired outcome.”

“It didn’t work,” he looked at the bread, at the knife, at Frederick, “it didn’t work because I tipped Hannibal off. I think he was suspicious before that, he was always smart, but I did that. That’s why things happened as they did. That’s why Abigail is dead.”

For a moment, Frederick’s tongue felt lame and his heart leapt into his throat. Whenever he thought he had finally found the key to Will Graham, some new, bewildering, misshapen part of the puzzle appeared. And who knew what the gruesome final picture would be, anyway? He picked up his butter knife again for something to do, turning that information in his head.

“Why?”

“Because that’s what you’d do for a friend, right?”

“Is that all you were? Friends?”

Frederick was not sure what he was actually asking for. Any connection between those two men could not be slotted into the relationship paradigms of normal, sane people.

“I don’t know,” Will said, after a moment of contemplation.

Frederick petted Winston’s head as the dog pushed against his calf.

“I have no trouble believing that.”


	10. Chapter 10

Frederick did not spend another night in Will’s room, but he left the door to his own open and, in silent agreement, so did Will. At night, Frederick could just hear the rustling of his dogs on the blankets and the creaking of his bed when he turned. Though the noise should perhaps have made him more nervous, it was actually easier for him to just blame everything that he heard and could not explain on Will and his pets. Sleep still did not come easily, but at least it came at all, if fitfully so.

The days were spent mostly apart. Frederick’s house was big enough that avoiding each other did not prove to be a challenge. Frederick caught up on his reading and worked on articles to distract himself. Will escaped the house whenever he could to leave the suburbs and take long walks in the countryside and otherwise stayed in fussing over his wounded dogs. A couple of times he drove into the city to the FBI headquarters, but as far as Frederick knew, he had not once returned to his own house.

Mealtimes also happened on different planes, since Will had a habit of getting up much earlier than Frederick. Still, they would sometimes run into each other in the kitchen both trying to cook. On the fifth day of his stay, Will walked in on him when Frederick was just finishing a breakfast of depressingly healthy cereal, poring over one of his many magazines and making notes which of his colleagues he should approach for a cooperation to ensure that he would get his articles into one of the more prestigious journals through their connections.

“I wanted to make pizza today. Do you want to have some?”

Frederick thought to himself that the fact that Will seemed to be ready to plan a meal with him indicated that he intended to stay for longer, but did not comment, much as he would not have called out to a deer approaching him in the forest. With a twinge of anger for his own pervasive weakness, he realised that he rather liked the idea of Will nesting in his guest room. It meant that Frederick did not have to brave his inner demons by himself, either.

“You will have to be a vegetarian if you choose to eat with me,” Frederick reminded him, lifting a spoonful of greyish oatmeal with nuts to underline the tragic point.

“I think I have had enough of meat for now.”

A brief smile touched Frederick’s lips.

“Understandable.”

He pushed the bowl away.

“Would you like to come shopping for ingredients?” Will asked after a moment’s pause, in which had probably deliberated whether he really wanted to spend that much time with Frederick and, curiously enough, decided for it. Frederick was happy for it; reluctant co-dependency was still easier on the ego than one-sided satellisation and his psyche did seem to rely on Will’s presence at the moment.

“It would not kill me to get out of here,” Frederick said.

“Considering it’s you? It might. But so could staying here.”

Glowering at Will, Frederick reached for his cane.

“Yes, thank you for the reminder.”

“Oh, I don’t need to remind you, Frederick.”

Will glanced at him from the corners of his eyes.

“Did you have a bad night or is there another reason you need to assert my psychological frailty?”

There was no answer. For once, it seemed like he had managed to get the last word in during a conversation with Will, which was rather satisfying.

The FBI car had vanished for now, but Frederick had never derived a great sense of safety from it, anyway. Considering that he had gotten shot in the FBI headquarters, during an FBI interrogation, by an FBI agent, they were obviously not the people to turn to.

“We should take the car or we will be left carrying dog food all the way home,” Frederick noted.

“Do you allow something as menial as groceries in your Jaguar?” Will asked. “Even dog food?”

“If it cannot be avoided. After all, I have allowed your pets to leave the remains of their fur all over my furniture as well,” Frederick gave back.

“Perhaps we take the car that has a trunk that fits more than a suitcase, though,” Will said. “I’m sure there are many interesting things a psychologist could say about someone who so drastically prefers style over basic functionality.”

“They have good taste.”

There was a garage at the side of his house that was now also home to Will’s bulky Volvo which Frederick climbed into. Unsurprisingly, the inside smelled faintly like wet dog.

It was a short drive to the supermarket that they spent in silence. Frederick was interested what music Will liked, since he found it difficult to place him in that regard, but he supposed ‘nothing’ was an interpretable answer as well. Since Will spent time outside and usually dropped by the supermarket on the way back, stocking up on basics, Frederick had not actually left his house in days and he forced himself now to look out the windows. It would not be long until his sick leave ended; hiding himself away forever was not an option.

“When will we eat?” he asked. “I wanted to set up a Skype conference with a colleague later today.”

“I have nothing planned with the FBI, so whenever you want.”

“I take it they have not gotten anywhere with your case yet?”

“No. Jack pushes that it’s a threat and intimidation, but legally, it’s just – property damage.”

Will sounded forlorn, not like someone who still had the energy to get angry at that particular injustice, and Frederick could hardly blame him.

“Any leads?”

“No. Though Jack did want me to ask you to come in when you had time to go over what you found again.”

“I will be back at work in ten days, so next week would be best for me,” Frederick said. He had zero interest in facing down Jack Crawford again, but by this point the history Will and him shared forced him to lend at least that much of a helping hand.

Will, who had parked them under a oak throwing its shadow over the car, pulled the key from the ignition and turned in his seat.

“Are you really going to go back there? To the asylum?”

“I work there. Where else would I go?” Frederick answered, pretending not to understand the actual meaning behind Will’s words.

“How many psychopaths have to assault you before you give up?”

“Evidently more than two,” Frederick said, raising his chin and pushing the door open, his grip around the knob of his cane tight as he slid out of the car.

Will locked up and joined him on his way to the supermarket.

“If you set aside your pride for a moment, you cannot tell me that you would tell a patient with your history to go back to work in an environment full of violent mentally ill people. As I’ve said, you’re not _that_ bad of a psychologist.”

Frowning, Frederick walked ahead of him through the sliding glass doors, but schooled his face to display a smile reflecting only affected, slightly humorous superiority when he turned around.

“Will, the reason I do not visit a psychologist myself is to avoid this kind of scrutiny. Now, would you be so kind and concentrate on the pizza toppings instead of my mental state?”

Apparently giving up, Will followed him wordlessly to the multideck cabinet to investigate the cheese.

“I don’t cook for people much,” he said, as if to himself. “I know more about what my dogs like.”

“If you prepare our food with as much love as the meals your dogs get, it can only be delicious,” Frederick muttered, picking up a block of Swiss Gouda.

“I don’t know, Frederick, can you curl up on the carpet and warm my feet?”

“At least I have slept in your bed and thus made it impossible for you to do so that night. I think that makes me sufficiently dog-like.”

The slight curve of Will’s lips was not accompanied by a mocking glance for once, which Frederick found rather refreshing. He had never had a talent to make people like him, though he could usually at least force respect through his position, but the latter had failed on Will and it was gratifying to see that he could get any positive reaction.

He picked out a cheese and followed Will to the selection of dog food, glancing at the rows of cans with specialised ingredients touted on the labels.

“Do your dogs have any discernible species?”

“Winston might have a Golden Retriever in the family tree. With Buddy, I’m not sure. He looks like a cross of some sort of terrier and…”

“A rat?” Frederick offered.

Now Will chuckled.

“I _did_ find him in a sewer.”

“Are all your dogs rescued?”

“From the streets, yes, and a couple from a kill shelter.” Will paused. “I mean, they were,” he added quietly and snatched a few bags of treats from the shelf. “I thought I was doing them a kindness, but I guess in the end fate got a hold of them after all.”

“I think even the staunchest animal rights supporter could not blame you for your lack of clairvoyance.”

They moved slowly onwards through the aisles. Will was pushing the shopping cart.

“But did I need to look into the future to see there would be a bad end to this story? I knew what Hannibal was, eventually, and yet I didn’t back off. Whoever killed them knew about him. They died because I played with fire.” He glanced at Frederick. “Really, even if you’re not afraid of _me_ , it surprises me you take the risk of keeping me in your house.”

“I attract plenty of danger on my own,” Frederick said. “Are you eager to be kicked out of my place or why are you asking?”

Will heaved a pack of bottled water into the shopping cart.

“You continue to show a peculiar sort of courage and I’m wondering if you’re brave or proud,” he said, wiping a strand of dark hair out of his forehead.

“Is ‘proud’ a euphemism for ‘stupid’ here?”

“Isn’t it usually?”

Frederick smiled at the provocation that sounded less designed to truly hit and hurt than it usually would when Will spoke to him.

“Let us find olives and mushrooms,” he said, “and whatever else I feel I need to have on this pizza to fill the hole that the missing meat leaves.”

-

Will had taken hold of both bags so Frederick had his hands free for his cane and key when they arrived at home. He’d forgotten his key for the connecting door between house and garage, so they had to take the long way around to the front.

Just as he had the key in the hole, a flash went off to his left. Will made a sound that would have better befitted one of his dogs, a quiet growl in the back of his throat.

Turning, Frederick saw Freddie Lounds, lifting her camera with a smile, showcasing the kind of bold-faced cheekiness that he had always found difficult not to admire even while it grated on him. Apparently her police-appointed demise had not slowed her down much; it had even given her a chance for a reveal-all in-depth article about the procedures surrounding the fake murder that Frederick had glanced at with surprise and vague amusement some time ago. Only Freddie Lounds could turn her own death into a tabloid story.

“Edit the street signs out, would you? I get enough unwanted visitors,” he told her.

“So I’ve heard. Although this one seems to be pretty welcome…”

Her curious gaze met Will, taking in the shopping bags.

“Was the report you did on my hospital stay not enough, Freddie? It had photos,” Will said unhappily.

“People like follow-ups,” she said with a shrug. “I’ve heard you got into more trouble, too… and that you’ve made new friends as well.” She turned back to Frederick with a smile. “First you have him in your cell and now you have in your _house_ , Frederick?”

“I am always happy to correct former mistakes. Apparently I am just unable to let Will go,” Frederick said, slightly bemused. “I keep an eye on my former patients. But you must excuse us for now…”

He had a feeling that if he let Freddie push Will further, he would give her too many juicy quotes for the article she was no doubt planning to write (possibly including swear words and almost surely containing more sarcasm than would make him look benevolent).

“I’ll be back,” Freddie said with a smile.

“I expect nothing less.”

Frederick pushed the door open and Will fled inside while Frederick watched Freddie walk towards a small alleyway between houses where she had probably parked her car out of view.

-

“Winston likes you.”

“I suspect Winston mostly likes pizza.”

Frederick held his piece out of the way of the dog currently attempting to crawl into his lap. Both Buddy and Winston were back on their four paws and moving, though Buddy at a considerably slower speed still. Winston, however, was already well enough to try and steal the food from Frederick’s hands, something Will seemed to find too entertaining to stop.

“There is no meat here, dog. Will, give me one of these treats before he eats my tie.”

Of course, Will finished his own piece first before he slowly reached for the plastic package that still laid in the shopping bag next to him. The rustle captured Winston’s attention. Frederick took the package of treats and was able to free a fish-shaped piece which Winston received with his tail wagging like a windshield wiper.

“Maybe Winston remembers you saved his life. That would create a bond, wouldn’t it?”

The pointed look Will gave him made Frederick wonder what else but the dog he could really be talking about. The answer was not far.

“Freddie Lounds _did_ make an admirable impromptu nurse,” he said.

“Not to mention that you share a set of ethics.”

Frederick cocked his head and smiled, unwilling to let Will shame him for his morals again. Neither of them had a white vest.

“I do admire her determination, annoying as it can be.”

“You two would make an excellent couple.”

Chuckling briefly, Frederick reached down to pet Winston’s head, which had landed in his lap again.

“Not at all. I am not useful to her, so there is no reason for her to be with me,” Frederick said mildly. He did not judge her for the focus on her career he had noticed in their prior conversations – it was efficient. She knew what she wanted and it was not the plot of a purple-prose romance novel. “And of course, my own interest in women is strictly platonic.”

It seemed unproblematic to reveal this to Will. He had had a much more outlandish and intense relationship to at least one man than Frederick could boast of even after many admittedly short-lived romances with members of his own sex.

“I’m not sure even a platonic relationship with Freddie Lounds is a good idea. That seems like a way to end up with your childhood secrets aired out in public.”

“At least my friends are a little more palatable than yours,” Frederick said dryly, remembering how Will had described his relationship with Hannibal. He dragged his fingertips behind Winston’s ears. “Other than perhaps the furred ones.”

“I always knew I should have stuck to them,” Will muttered, lifting his exceptionally ugly little dog with the underbite into his arms.


	11. Chapter 11

“I still don’t understand your motivation for taking the two dogs.”

Unimpressed, Frederick looked at Jack sitting on the other side of the desk.

“Are you going to try and pin these murders on me, Jack? Why would I kill Will’s pets?” he asked, his fingers slowly working around the smooth metal head of his cane.

“What murders? Do you have something else to confess, Frederick?”

Though Jack was obviously just mocking him, Frederick had to admit it was an interesting hiccup for him to have had. Not being an animal enthusiast himself, he would not have spoken of the _murder_ of dogs before, but being around Will and seeing the effect said deaths had had on his psyche had apparently changed his outlook in this case.

“I was in shock, the dogs were there. It was not a matter of expending much mental energy to grab them and run, seeing as I could expect them to die, too, if I left them. Despite what you believe, I am not a thoroughly despicable person. Why should I not save some dogs if it costs me nothing?”

He found it a bit ridiculous that he had to defend himself because he had done something so common-sense. Even Jack seemed to be bored toying with him now and rose to his feet.

“Alright, we will come back to you if we have any further questions,” he said.

“Please do,” Frederick answered with an offensively friendly smile and turned to leave the room with him.

Stepping into the hallway, Frederick almost bumped into a woman who was carrying her laptop open in front of her. He stopped to apologise, then found himself looking at her more closely as he recognised her stern face with the striking electric blue eyes.

“Ms. Sunfelt?” he asked.

She took him in with narrowed eyes.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m afraid I don’t know who you are, Mister…”

“Dr. Chilton,” Frederick said. “We met when your cousin came to my private practice back in the day – Randall Tier. May I ask what happened to him?”

The case had been distantly memorable because Tier’s neurosis made him believe he was an animal, for which ‘Tier’ was the German word. It was the sort of thing that stuck with you, even though Frederick had not been able to solve his problem for him.

“Doesn’t everyone know what happened to him?” she asked, icily.

There were hasty, heavy steps behind them. Jack, who had already been around a corner, hurried towards them.

“Wait a moment – did you say Randall Tier is Agent Sunfelt’s _cousin_?”

The colour drained from Sunfelt’s face. However, fear did not rule there; rather, her jaw clenched and her lips became a thin line. Frederick had no idea what was going on, but on Jack’s face, understanding dawned.

“You – both of you. Come with me,” he demanded.

Sunfelt stood her ground, looking him straight in the eyes once before she marched after him. Frederick followed and almost ran into Jack when he stood abruptly and pointed at a young man, who was sipping coffee and nearly spilled it over his shirt as he attempted to correct his posture and stand straight.

“Find me Will Graham. He should be in the lobby,” Jack barked.

Frederick and Sunfelt were led into an empty office where Jack and Sunfelt continued to face each other down.

“What did you find?” Jack asked, eventually.

“Enough,” she answered, her voice like steel.

Looking between them, Frederick slowly took a step back and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Everyone, she had said, knew what had happened to Randall Tier, so maybe Ms. Lounds and her colleagues had taken note as well.

As soon as he got to the second letter of Tier’s surname in the search bar, Google filled in rather ghoulish additions: _Randall Tier dismembered_ , _Randall Tier death_ and the at first glance curious _Randall Tier museum pictures_. An article in the Baltimore Sun stood at the top of the search feed and illuminated the connection.

**Gruesome Death in Baltimore Natural History Museum**

_Baltimore Natural History Museum employee Randall Tier was found dismembered and draped in pieces over an exhibition piece this morning…_

Frederick glanced at the date and realised why this extraordinary event had not reached his ears as so much as a whisper: when it had happened, he had been unconscious in the hospital. Still, the connections did not open themselves to him. Had Hannibal been playing arts and crafts with corpses again as he so liked to do to satisfy his twisted twin-senses of humour and aesthetics? But what did Sunfelt have to do with that?

The door opened once more and Will entered, looking between the three of them, uncomprehending. However, Sunfelt’s face twitched, moved from the defiant expression to one of repulsion.

“What’s going on?” Will asked, looking at Jack.

“Frederick here just pointed out that Agent Sunfelt is Randall Tier’s cousin.”

“Step-cousin,” she said. “His uncle was my mother’s second husband. I suppose that’s why you never found out.” Her angry gaze brushed Frederick. “Until now, anyway.”

Will had grown very still standing there, framed by the door like a painting.

“You found out about my undercover investigation of Hannibal Lecter,” Will said, barely louder than a whisper, “and you knew how to cut the dogs so I could read the signs – obviously you had access to the reports of what happened to us when Hannibal attacked, too.”

“Yes, I found enough evidence of your and Jack’s arrangement in the case files. Aren’t you just great at solving crimes, Mr. Graham?” she asked, her voice dropping to a condescending coo. “I always knew that someone who is so good at getting into killers’ heads would turn out to be one himself, if not at the beginning, then after a few years of this work.”

“Your cousin…”

“My cousin was sick, Mr. Graham, and you killed him to protect your cover.”

A cold shudder ran down Frederick’s spine as he looked at Will, hoping for him to deny her accusation, be outraged.

“He attacked me. It was self-defence,” Will said, instead.

Frederick held on to his staff like it was a plank and he a drowning man. _Well, he did tell me he was a killer._ It just had not related to Abigail as Frederick had thought it did.

“You know what? I’d even believe that. I know that Randall was very sick. But when he was dead, when you had killed him – was it necessary to pull him into pieces and put him up in the museum?! Was that self-defence?!” Sunfelt’s voice sounded a little choked, but her hands were balled into fists as she took a step towards Will. Jack moved quickly between them.

Will stood there, still not fulfilling Frederick’s unspoken wish that he would say something, anything, to make himself look less guilty. He just stared straight ahead.

“It was his becoming,” he said, slowly. “This was he wanted to be.”

“So what?! If a suicidal person comes to you, do you shoot them?! He was mentally ill, that means you _don’t_ indulge his every wish when you yourself are right in the head!” She gritted her teeth. “But of course, I doubt someone who makes an art display of a corpse is completely sane.”

“Why the dogs?” Jack asked.

“Because I made your cousin an animal,” Will answered in her stead. “You wanted to show me how much it hurts to lose an animal. That’s what I reduced Randall to.”

“Still got the touch, Mr. Graham,” she said flatly.

“And you wanted to remind me of all the people who got hurt because of me with the way you cut the dogs.”

“There are enough, aren’t there? And now there are more.”

“Agent Sunfelt, Will didn’t kill his own dogs,” Jack gave back.

“No, he just killed mine, apparently.” She glowered at Jack. “Go on, report me. But be ready to discuss the whole of Mr. Graham’s undercover actions and him baiting Hannibal Lecter before a jury and Ms. Prunell – because I certainly will if you try to get me for this.” She turned her gaze on Will. “I don’t intend to kill you. I don’t even want to harm you further. I just know that you loved these animals and I wanted you to feel what you apparently I thought I felt. It’s not the same, though. But unlike you, I wouldn’t kill a person.”

With her chin held high, Agent Sunfelt strode out of the room, Jack in hot pursuit.

Frederick looked at Will, but the man’s gaze went straight through him, through the wall. He was many miles away.

-

Frederick had visited a colleague at the University of Baltimore psychology department before dropping by the FBI headquarters, so he and Will had arrived in different cars. There were no words exchanged between them in the room or on the way to the parking lot and Frederick was still tongue-tied even as Will veered off towards his Volvo.

It was not news that Will could kill in self-defence. That was how Hannibal and him had acquired the Hobbs girl and Frederick did not think that he could be blamed for it, although the fact that he had now managed it _twice_ showed that he was a disquietingly effective killer if he wanted to be.

He also assumed that the display had not been a personal fancy, but a way to convince Hannibal of Will’s intentions. Feigning kinship was, after all, a true and tested way to get any creature to trust you. Ingenious, really, to make use of a corpse if you happened to have one, though Frederick’s stomach was in knots. He wondered what Will had been thinking that night in the museum. He wondered if some part of him had understood what Hannibal saw in the macabre play with dead body parts. Frederick could not have done it, not for any good cause.

Will’s car had overtaken him at a stop light and soon vanished out of sight. Frederick expected to meet him at his house, but when he opened his garage door, the Volvo was not in there.

Well, it was not unreasonable to expect that Will would want to clear his head after this revelation. Frederick opened the side door of the garage and switched on the living room lights. Habitually, he glanced at the screen of his phone and found that he had a new message from Will.

_It seems I’m not in danger in my own home. Thanks for your hospitality._

Slowly, Frederick walked up the stairs. The guest bedroom was empty, only the crumpled sheets left on the bed where Will had slept with his dogs. Those, too, were nowhere to be found. The house was as empty and dark and gigantic as before.

-

The next few nights, Frederick listened to the house working at night and dreamt of Hannibal’s steps coming up the stairs when his eyes finally closed from sheer exhaustion. There was still some of Will’s food in the fridge and it took Frederick three days to throw an open package of sausages away. He was alone again and though he supposed most people would be very relieved to have a man who had cut up the corpse of his own victim out of their home, all Frederick could think of, and hated to admit, was that around Will he had felt safer.


End file.
